


and the ships are left to rust

by flailingthroughsanity



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Developing Relationship, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 18:35:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15297540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flailingthroughsanity/pseuds/flailingthroughsanity
Summary: Shiro always sees him come in, dark hair and hooded purple-mauve eyes - drinks single-malt whiskey, neat, two fingers, and downs them by the second. He doesn’t say much, throws a curious glance at the crowd, the amber-tint to his mauve eyes offset by the exhaustion lining them, a new scar decorating the cheek or the temple or the lip. It’s almost become second nature to lay out a glass for the other without a single word spoken.Keith slithers in through the crowd at the local pub, head down as he shoulders his way through to the edge of the counter, where the bartender with the prosthetic arm sets out a glass for him with a small smile and a bemused look. The whiskey is made to his liking, and he tastes the edge of maple as he downs the shot in one go.One tries to move on with his life, with less parts than he started with; the other is desperate to keep the future at bay, if only for a night, and tries to avoid the past from catching up. Time always runs out.





	and the ships are left to rust

**Author's Note:**

> This is a new direction for me and my writing. It's more centred on dialogue and issues on alcohol abuse and recovery and these are things obviously outside my comfort zone, but hey, you can't really improve if you keep playing safe. I welcome critique and feedback on this, as always, especially considering these are topics and themes that are in high contention and I hope that I managed to get them across in this work. This fic is inspired by my love for noir films (Chinatown, The Big Sleep) and neo-noir stories (Jessica Jones) although it doesn't really try to imitate those, but mirror their themes.
> 
> Trigger/Content Warning: Alcohol abuse, past trauma, implied rape (not between main pairing), death, character injury
> 
>  
> 
> [[PLAYLIST]](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl3x1Z8e2l8gAxesdfUuKMpVSvefQUXAf)

**and the ships are left to rust**

 

* * *

**_QUEENS, NEW YORK_ ** _ — Tragedy befalls 21st street of Long Island City as a double murder decorate what was a quiet night in October. According to the police, Hal (36) Kogane, retired NYPD chief of patrol, and wife Krolia (32) were found murdered in their home at 7:18 PM. A neighbor reported hearing raised voices and shouting starting 6 PM but failed to notify local police. ‘They got quiet quickly,’ says Mary de Luca. ‘Didn’t really get worried. Hal’s a good man, everybody knew it, and Krolia and Keith were darlings.’ At 7 PM, gunshots were heard, which prompted surprised neighbors to ring the district patrol and investigators found the bodies of Hal (gunshot, temple) and Krolia (gunshot, chest and forehead). As per current investigation, signs of forced entry and theft were apparent in the crime scene, and police officers found the only surviving member of the family Keith Kogane (8), son, hiding inside a false panel inside the living room cabinet. The suspect and killer of well-respected Hal and Krolia Kogane remains to be seen as investigators root through the evidence, as well as the condition of Keith Kogane, who narrowly escaped a traumatizing experience.  _ **More on page 8…**

* * *

 

Hell’s Kitchen — or this particular area of Hell’s Kitchen, running West 42nd street — was, to Keith, a particularly accurate name for the area. It isn’t like he has a choice, though. When you get dealt the smaller, uglier cards—you learn to play with what you got and it doesn’t mean shit to mince words and turn your nose up when it’s you between a wall and an ugly place. For what it’s worth, the apartment prices aren’t terribly high, just gotta stomach walking past the junkie passed out in the hallway or the one outside by the steps and maybe kick the toilet a bit before it actually starts flushing. All in all, Keith’s had better than most. It’s not like he gets to be choosy, anyway.

Still, there is something to be said for a place called Hell’s Kitchen, where you step over the piles of garbage and shit littering half of the sidewalk, try not to trip over homeless Frank’s collection of ransacked, pilfered rubber shoes unless you want to get egg shells thrown at you and just try not to make eye contact with anyone ever. Too many tourists passing by the day, bumping into Keith with their sharp perfumes and wide-brim hats and loud voices, asshole drivers that want to run you down the moment you step onto the pedestrian lane, one beating heart across the millions in New York City.

He shuts the door to his apartment, and makes sure that his keys are somewhere on him—front pocket, back pocket, he doesn’t really care—before locking the door. Tries to. It’s busted, the knob turning too softly as he jingles it again. “Shit.”

Well, he could stand here and complain, but it’s not like it’ll change things. Keith purses his lips and shuts the door, enough for it not to loosen and open on its own, before heading down the hall. It’s mostly empty, lit, and the old elevator at the end wasn’t in use. He tucks his hands inside the pockets of his jacket and ignores the raised voices three doors down—it’s Tuesday night, he realizes, and guesses it’s zero cash for the weekly groceries that’s the cause for the slap he could hear through the door. The rest of the apartments on the floor are quiet, almost dead silent, the way it usually got when Three Doors Down had their nightly spat and Keith’s not one to break the routine as he punches the DOWN button and tries not to listen to Mrs. Three Doors Down’s heaping verbal abuse again. After weeks of the same shit, it gets tiring.

Hell’s Kitchen at night isn’t really that chilly—you get used to it the longer you stay and Keith’s long gotten comfortable decking in old, beaten-up leather jacket and boots, it was pretty much sacrilegious to do otherwise. Not a lot of people about, couple of guys in hoodies talking by an open alley, cigarettes in hand, and the usual passerby, carrying grocery bags and glaring at anyone who had the balls to look into their eyes for more than a second. Keith eyes the nearby mini-mart and, even across the street, he can see the stock of liquor by the door. Close to midnight, and on a weekday, he guesses it’s the student from 2A of his apartment building working the shift — Lean or Lark or Lance or whatever.

He doesn’t really feel like chatting, or more accurately, grunting at every snippet of conversation the student tries to breathe life into as he punches Keith’s purchases slowly that he almost suspects the part-timer to be doing it on purpose.

There was another place he could go, at this time, and just a few blocks away. The wallet in his pocket probably has enough for a few glasses, maybe more if he gets a subway footlong instead of the onion bagel in the morning, and starts walking west, ignoring the rushing cars and buses.

The pub is set in the corner two blocks in, and Keith stands by the intersection for a moment. A draft brings a chill with it, and he pulls his jacket tighter, the rustle of the leaves of the few trees installed in the sideways in his ears. Some of the local shops—a Dunkin Donuts, dollar pizza houses and the staple Chinese fastfood restaurant—are closed, graffiti marking the steel shutters, next to the pasted flyer and the trash to the side. Low amber light paints the glass panes of the pub, the handsome brick walls almost black in the night. At this angle, and in the cold, it looks inviting. Keith knows he’s made the decision even before he started crossing the street.

He pushes the door open, away from the cold, and steps into warmth. It’s not full, probably half-packed, but the low-toned chatter and the occasional laughter from whoever is at the pool makes it seem otherwise. The door shuts behind him as he stands, turning his eyes over the other patrons—mostly older, in plaid shirts and caps and jovial voices over the rim of their beer glasses. Keith’s looking for something stronger, stepping around the backs of a few chairs and into the amber-light of the bar’s overhead lamps.

The bartender turns to him, a small smile on his lips. “Hey, a bit surprised seeing you tonight.”

He’s already preparing Keith’s drink, and Keith settles on the stool, watching the broad shoulders and the deft hands—hand, one real, the other isn’t, but if it gave Shiro, the bartender, any trouble, it wasn’t obvious. The man moved the bottles and the glasses like magic, or maybe Keith’s just waxing poetic. His drink wasn’t anything flashy.

A shot of whiskey—single-malt, two fingers, neat—is set before him. Shiro’s smile is on his face, curiosity gleaming in taupe eyes. “So, anything special tonight?”

Keith raises a brow, pulling the glass close. Shiro smiles wider, holds his left hand up. “Didn’t mean anything bad by it, just wondering what had you coming here tonight instead of Friday.”

“Are you taking notes on my schedule?” Keith retorts, smiling back before taking the glass and downing it. The burn is welcome, the edge of maple on his tongue, and it warms his throat down to his stomach. The chink is dulled in the ambience of the pub as Keith sets it back.

Shiro gives him this small grin, just the bit of teeth and the curl of his lips. It’s cute, and attractive. Keith’s not going to lie about how it suits the man. “Hey, it’s not like I don’t notice you popping up here  _ every  _ Friday in the last few weeks.”

Keith shrugs, the music wobbling in and out of his ears. Something old, jazzy, and somehow, it suits the pub and her owner. “What can I say? I’m a man of routine.”

“Yet today you decide to call fuck it?” Shiro throws back, stepping away to grab a few bottles off the shelves. Keith watches the line of his back and the narrow hips, the almost-tight seams on his shirt and jeans. One of the other bartenders (‘Matt’ his mind supplies) calls for orders and Keith watches Shiro prepare them.

“Turn a new leaf over, do the unexpected.” His tone is dry, even to his own ears, but Shiro laughs all the same—deep and blown-out, the kind that doesn’t let anything hold him back, and it sounds pleasant, old notes playing off the edge of a crescendo. “I honestly don’t really see you doing that, Keith.”

His name sounds good on the other’s lips, when Shiro says it. Keith tilts his head. “Why? My lack of a personality stopping you from imagining it?”

Shiro calls for Matt to bring the drinks, colorful under the light, before grabbing the towel off the counter and wiping his hands with it. His shirt is bunched up front, and Keith sees the the light play on the muscles and the valleys, looking up at the taupe eyes. “No. Not at all. Something else.”

Keith hums, watching gold-russet whiskey poured into his glass. Shiro sets the bottle aside and leans on his arms on the counter, eyes on Keith, something he can’t decipher in their depths. “It’s like you’re waiting for something. Someone. Maybe both.”

“You also got a gig as a therapist?” Keith asks, not unkindly, but his voice doesn’t sound amused. He takes the glass and downs it, looking at the woodwork of the counter as the whiskey settles. It’s spotless—clean—a sign that her owner takes impeccable care in keeping her up. Shiro flashes him a sheepish smile when he does look up, and Keith shrugs.

“It’s the bartender thing,” Shiro grins as he stands and leans his weight on his hips, “when you work nights, you see and hear a lot of weird shit on top of the crying and the laughing.”

“I can imagine.” The other grins again, the metal prosthetic settled against his waist.

“You still haven’t told me what you do for a living.” Shiro says, baritone voice over the din of the chatter and the alcohol playing on his senses. Keith follows the movement of his other hand as he pulls a few more shot glasses and sets it on a tray for Matt. 

Keith frowns at him. “Didn’t know we were playing twenty questions.”

The curl of Shiro’s lip grows more distinct. “Point conceded, but I make it a habit to know my customers. Builds loyalty and trust and all that.”

Keith can’t help the amusement on his face as the words sink in, Shiro’s expression mirroring their thoughts. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

Shiro chuckles, amber playing off his hair and his skin and his eyes. His eyes are gold under the low light, and it softens the sharpness of his features. “I’m a newbie businessman, gotta start somewhere, plus I know my determination actually works.”

Keith grins. “You’re quite sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

Shiro shrugs, in imitation of Keith’s, before leaning on the counter again. This close, Keith can see the outline of the scar across his nose clearly — a line of skin paler than the rest, over the bridge of his nose. This close, Keith realizes there are gold flecks in the taupe. This close, Keith recognizes cedar off the other’s skin. He grips the edge of the table, tightly. “Took me three weeks, sure, but I got your name, at least. I’m a patient man.”

Keith doesn’t say anything — not yet. It’s a bit hard to, with the way Shiro was looking at him, and the scent of cedar close his nose. He ducks his head down and steals a gaze at the other patrons and the entrance. Laughter from the pool behind him reaches his ears, and he takes note of the sound of billiard balls hitting each other.

He looks back at the bartender and hums. “Moment of weakness. You don’t get to play twenty questions when I’m halfway through a bottle.”

Shiro is silent, keeps looking at him before nodding, straightening up, and a polite smile on his face—backing off. “Got it. I’ll wear you down when you’re just a quarter into the glass.”

“You can try.” Shiro’s only response was another smile before turning away to start mixing more drinks.

Keith watches him work for a bit — raking his eyes over the other’s form, the economic movements, the purposeful manner he carries himself with. Back is ramrod straight, chest always puffed out and, of course, there’s the prosthetic arm. Military. Ex. Maybe police force, Keith thinks, noting the youth. Regardless, Keith recognizes military training in the way Shiro basically holds himself—it’s not hard, his own dad was chief of police before, and even if the memories are rustic, and they’d do well to dwell on the bottom of the glass, Keith can still remember it with clarity.

The constant weight on his chest makes itself known, and he ducks his head, hand against his forehead and pressing in as he stares at his empty glass. The buzz is still there, but not strong enough for him—not for the usual. Sometimes, it takes half the bottle. Others, it takes more than one.

Depends on the night, really. Depends on the memories he’s trying to supress. No good ever came out from dwelling on the past.

He manages to scrounge cash from the inside of his jacket, flattening the crumpled lines on the counter. Shiro’s eyes shift to his and Keith bites his lip, pushing the money across the counter. A small smile appears on the other’s lips as he reaches for the money, depositing it in the cash machine below. The tip doesn’t go into his own pocket, Keith knows. He knows Shiro surreptitiously places it in Matt’s jar. Keith doesn’t really mind.

He can feel Shiro’s eyes on him as he stands from his stool, ducking his head and trying to make his way through the maze of seats. He stops halfway, just a meter or so away from the counter and he looks up at Shiro.

His eyes are still on Keith, and he ducks his head as he looks for the words. Shiro’s expression grows expectant, the smile on his face patient. Keith motions with a hand, listless. “I get paid to look for dirt in people’s shit.”

A brow is raised in amusement, Shiro leaning in. “Really? Interesting.”

No guffaw or remark about how easy it was to wear Keith down reaches his ears and, save for the gleam in Shiro’s eyes as he takes in Keith’s word, nothing really indicates that this slow revealing of information was anything but curiosity. It’s also a bit hard to get a read on Shiro’s face, half of it is melding in shadow of the amber light and the slight obscuration in Keith’s vision.

Still, not enough. That Lance kid better keep his mouth shut when he swings by to buy more.

Keith takes one look at Shiro, who smiles at him and raises a hand, waving a bit, before he turns away and steps back into the cold.

* * *

**_NEW YORK ENTERPRISE_** _–_ _Local NYPD chief of patrol Harrison Mercal dedicates the four-story LIC police watch garrison to late chief of patrol Hal Kogane who, along with his wife, was brutally murdered in their home in Queens, NY, leaving behind an eight-year old son now under care of the local youth and social welfare department. Just the year before, Hal Kogane was brought to public light as the man who arrested crime lord and mob boss Zarkon Galra, head of local crime syndicate and criminal underworld network that had been plaguing Queens for the last decade. Galra’s arrest brought with it immediate mitigation of criminal activity within the area. “We lost a good man, an honest man, who has done more for us than we could ever put into words,” says Mercal, who was present during the Koganes’ funeral._ **More on page 4…**

* * *

When he wakes, he’s covered in a layer of sweat and he’s panting. It takes a moment for Keith to adjust to his surroundings, throwing the covers off him as the early dawn light seeps through the cracks in his curtain. It’s quiet—listless and stone-still and it takes a breath or two before sound rushes back in. The honk of the cars down the morning traffic, footfalls on the floor of the apartment above him and the rushed-in gasps of his own breathing. 

There’s a slight pounding to his head, under the skin and just simmering and he reaches up to rub the palm of his hand down his face. His hair is stuck to his forehead, sweaty, and he realizes he’s starting to smell.

Keith grabs his phone from off the desk, charger wire hanging off and the sound of it hitting the wood and sliding down the floor has him cursing. No use bitching about a dead phone, Keith makes his way over the living room, kicking aside fallen shirts and socks and manages to plug the phone in near the small rickety desk he has set up when there’s a knock on the door.

He pauses, waits for a few seconds—ears straining to hear anything other than the cars or the dulled conversation happening overhead.

“Keith, open up. It’s Pidge.” A voice calls out, impatient, followed by fast knocks. He relaxes, pulling in the groan as he walks all the way to the front door and opens it.

“What do you want?” He asks, not really feeling up to being nice. Pidge, it seems, wasn’t in the mood as well as she pushes her way in – backpack hitting him by the arm as she settles on the couch. “Good morning to you, too.”

“Anyone ever tell you that it’s not nice to do business any time before ten in the morning?” Keith grouses, closing the door behind him and settling by the wall. Pidge hums to herself, spectacles gleaming in the morning light as she pulls documents from her bag. He crosses his arms, waiting for her.

“If you don’t clean up that wound, you’re going to get an infection,” she mutters and Keith raises his hand to feel the edge of the cut against his jaw. “What was it, this time? Barfight? Someone bumped into you?”

He glares. “I tripped. You make it sound like I go around beating people up.”

Pidge doesn’t answer, but her expression says enough. The light cracking in through the shades isn’t bright enough for the entire room, but he does manage to catch that he had, more or less, cleaned up. From his vantage, Pidge almost seems smaller than usual – and when she’s hunched over her documents, wide-eyed as she rifts for another case for Keith, it’s almost like she wasn’t an ex-member of the local crime gangs.  _ Cyber _ crime, she would note with precision. Still, illegal exchange of information and database hacking notwithstanding, Keith knows a good person when he sees it. It’s not hard to, not with all the shit and the blood hanging off every mirror’s edge.

“When am I going to get paid for that C&D order I did last week?” He asks, walking over to the shelf by the corner. He grabs a glass and a bottle, pours in a shot. There was barely half of it left inside, and he sets it back, leaning against the desk as he takes a swig.

“Two days, Hunk’s gotta get it through payroll first and you’ll have your money.” He doesn’t mask the deep breath he takes, and he’s somewhat mollified by Pidge’s irritated glance towards him.

“Okay, here.” She hands him a document. “New contract for you. Got a client, wants her husband tailed. She thinks he’s having an affair and she wants to find out, slap it on him when she files for divorce.”

Keith lets the paper fall to the desk. “I’m guessing she wants the photos done in the act?”

Pidge gives him a look that has him groaning. “Fine, I’ll take it. I need the money.”

“Yes, you do. Save enough and you can even afford a broom.” Pidge bites back, pulling out a paper bag and tossing to him. Keith opens the package and sees a subway foot-long, slightly flattened, but looked edible enough. “Don’t starve yourself, Kogane. I still might need you.”

“Gee, I feel the love.” He does, however, appreciate the thought and isn’t one to look at a gift horse in the mouth. He pulls the paper down and takes a bite, tasting mustard and the barely cooked sausage. “Thanks.”

Pidge shrugs, standing and pulling her bag up. She adjusts her hood and pulls it over her head, turning to him. “Least I could do, seeing as you drink your profits away.”

“It’s an expensive lifestyle.” He’s not bothered by the insinuation as he grabs the class and downs it all. Taking another bite, he mouths around the hotdog. “Plus, it helps.”

Pidge takes a moment to look at him – her gaze is searching, slightly obscured by the light glinting off her lenses and Keith feels somewhat bare under her gaze. Pidge has always been on the quieter side, and even though her bartender brother might be a bit unaware of her underworld connections, when Keith takes a look at her, it’s also the furthest thing from his mind. “With the forgetting or the remembering?”

Keith doesn’t answer, sets the glass back down as he looks at his food. Pidge takes his silence as an answer, and her footsteps are quiet as she lets herself out. Her voice tumbles over the hall before the door is closed. “Take care of yourself, Keith.”

When the door shuts, Keith puts the sub away, losing his appetite. The living room is dark and cold, quiet save for his breathing and the pad of his footfalls as he sits on the chair behind the desk. He sets the paper with the job details aside, reminding himself to read it after he’s showered and pulls the drawer open.

There’s nothing inside but a gun, a photograph, and a letter tucked against the wall of the drawer so tight, it might not have been there. His eyes rove over the metal of the gun – Walther P99 – before reaching for the photo. It’s old, the kind that you have to print out at the local camera store or from your own printer. The edges are worn, too-often pulled in stress, in the moments and the nights where his back is against the corner, the glass by his feet and the shards of the bottle he’s thrown into the trash can littering the ground. The picture has faded, not enough to lose color, but enough to remind him that the hourglass isn’t moving.

The letter goes ignored, but Keith knows what’s inside. He’s read it so many times, he’s memorized the words, and he can recite them even in sleep.

The glass is empty, and he doesn’t feel like eating. Keith traces the smile on his dad’s face with a finger and he looks at his mom’s wide laugh, her dark hair and his own face smiling back at him – seven years old, enamored with the way her hair fell against his face.

“To not missing you someday,” Keith whispers, raising the glass.

* * *

_ Sir, _

_ This is my formal letter of resignation. Six years in law enforcement has taught me more than you could ever know or I could ever write down, and I can say that it has been the best years in my life. I wish I could say that the accident didn’t change me, or made me a liability to the team, but to do so would jeopardize the lives of my men and this office. I have nothing but great respect and love for the New York Police Department, and I know that if I should need anything, I can always find help here. I hope to still be in service, regardless if it is with a badge or not, and know you can always find me ready to step in if needed. _

_ Best, _ __  
_ Cpt. Takashi Shirogane _ _  
_ __ Patrol Services Bureau, NYPD

* * *

“You good, man?” Matt asks from the side, and Shiro turns to him, smiling.

“Yeah, I got the delivery hauled in. Probably get the rest tomorrow.” The brunette turns to him, frowning. Shiro tilts his head at him – Matt’s a good kid, he knows that. Works for himself and a sister, both parents not around anymore. “It’s fine, Matt. You don’t have to come in tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?” He asks, hesitant. Shiro rolls his eyes and grips the other’s shoulder. He appreciates the concern, Shiro really does. Ever since the accident, he’s managed to step in the right direction and he can say, with all sincerity, that he’s not exactly as helpless as he was before.

“Yes, Matt. You’ve talked about the trip for ages, now. You don’t want to disappoint Katie.” Shiro smiles as the tension in the other’s shoulder loosens.  _ V’s _ wasn’t the kind of pub that got swamped by teenagers no matter what day of the week. Most of their customers are retired policemen and firefighters, some of Shiro’s men from the bureau and, biting his lip, Keith. “You know we’re only full-house on Fridays, right?”

“I know that, but,  _ still. _ ” Matt pats the counter with a towel, wiping away imaginary dirt. Shiro grabs the rag from him and puts it away, hand on his hip.

“Go home, Matt. Get some sleep. Enjoy the sights, the food. Live, kid.” Shiro prods, putting his arm around Matt’s shoulder and, well, not so subtly pushing him to the door.

The other laughs, extracting himself from Shiro to grab his bag. “Okay, okay. I’m out. Got it.”

He walks the other to the door, crossing his arms as Matt rubs his eyes tiredly, bag slung over his shoulder. Outside, morning was already making head-way and he watches the rush of cars and buses from behind the glass door. The morning influx of people – employees, students, workers – cover his view a bit, hidden by tired eyes and over cups brimming with caffeine.

“I’ll see you on Friday, then.” Matt announces, pushing the door open and turning back to him with a grin. “Oh, and it seems we got a familiar face poking around.”

Shiro raises a brow, following Matts’s gaze to across the street, where a familiar figure – dressed in a dark leather jacket – was making his way to one of the mini-marts dotting the street. He sees the dark hair and the sunglasses, but he recognizes the slouch and the too familiar creases and chipped-off leather.

Matt is grinning at him, and Shiro frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The other shrugs, stepping out. “I dunno, I’m off work.”

Shiro is unamused, and Matt laughs, throwing a salute his way. His brows furrow, watching Matt walk away before turning back to the mini-mart Keith just entered. He closes the door after himself, and returns to the counter to take stock.

He’s not going to lie to himself. Keith was attractive – pale skin and dark hair, mauve eyes and those lips always set in a smug smirk, like he knows something Shiro doesn’t. It’s a look that would have annoyed Shiro, he’s seen it too many times before, when he was in training and the local top-notchers thought they could scare the new Japanese kid. Funny, it doesn’t look condescending and irritating on Keith, but that’s probably because Keith likes to snark more than bite.

Still, in spite of his attraction, it’s not like he missed the looks toward his right arm. He may not be a cop anymore, but that kind of thing doesn’t leave you and he sees the subtle glances on his form and on his arm and that’s it, isn’t it? It’s always the arm – always the image of what’s not there and what’s not actually  _ his.  _

Shiro’s taken to looking at the positives, and his accomplishments. Managing to open a bottle with one hand, juggling glasses with one hand and breaking only two and looking at himself in the mirror – seeing the mottled, burned skin above the prosthesis and the side of his chest and his abdomen and not feel like breaking the glass.

He appreciates what Matt is doing – pushing him and prodding him into going after what he wants, and yeah, Keith is attractive, a bit secretive and obviously keeps his cards close to his chest, but the arm always – kinds of – gets in the way. Like usual.

His stomach growls, and he groans. He knows there’s no food in the small fridge under the counter – had packed only for the night, and sure, he could head up to his apartment behind the pub and make something but the mini-mart was just across the street – and it’s not like he was going just to bump into Keith.

The door is locked behind him, key in his pocket, as he crosses the street and steps into the air-conditioned store. He nods at the guy behind the counter and looks over the shelves and sees the dark hair by the refrigerated drinks – next to the ready-made meals.

It takes Keith a moment to notice Shiro standing beside him as he looks over his options. In fairness to Keith, he was standing behind him rather than beside, but he does notice the drawn-out look he can feel even from behind the glasses. “Twice in less than twenty-four hours, huh.”

Keith hums, pulling a Red Bull from the freezer. “Call it my new year’s resolution.”

Shiro grins at him, grabbing the boxed beef-steak meal. “It’s July, Keith.”

The other is quiet for a moment, before shrugging, lips curled. “Gotta start somewhere.”

Shiro chuckles, and grabs another boxed meal and taps it against Keith’s shoulder. “C’mon, breakfast on me. Let’s head to the pub.”

Keith stills, head turned to him, and Shiro can see the slit of purple above the line of the sunglasses and under the dark fringe. It’s not afraid-tense, but more on unsure-tense. “Unless you don’t want to?”

Shiro keeps the smile in place, even if he feels his hopes dropping as Keith looks about. He’s not looking at the arm, but it is close. Well, it’s not like Shiro’s used to disappointment. He’s about to put the food back when Keith raises the can in his hand. “I already ate, but I guess I can hang out for a bit?”

“Alright, deal.” Shiro smiles, and Keith grins back – small and almost invisible. Baby steps. One and two and three. He can do this. He’ll take what he can. It’s not much but Shiro’s adaptable, and getting to know more about his more than evasive customer was a good outcome.

The walk back to the pub was quiet, and Shiro spends more time watching the light play off Keith’s hair. He leaves the overhead lamps out, but the windows face the skyline less crowded by buildings, and the morning light floods in, dark maple walls and bricks.

He settles on the nearest table and watches Keith take off his glasses and the jacket. His eyes settle on the bare forearms and hands and the fingers opening the can. He spears the egg and cuts a bit away.

“Don’t usually get to see you out this early.” He says, and the flick of purple-mauve – this close, he can see the shift in color as the light plays on Keith’s face – to his is clear.

“I’m not usually up at this time, either.” Keith answers, brows furrowing as he takes a sip of the drink. Shiro files it away, alongside the easy, single-handed manner the other opens the can with—like he’s used to it.

“Up looking for dirt in people’s shit?” He grins, and ignores the swell of interest at the responding tilt of Keith’s lips. There could be a lot of ways one could interpret that line – investigations, private, most likely. Keith looked young—young _ er _ , and he had a lithe frame, not the kind you’d expect from private eyes, usually ex-cops, ex-special forces.

“That, or just generally looking.” Keith answers – voice low as he ducks and drinks from the can. Shiro sits back, chewing for a moment as he sees the slight tension between the other’s brows.

“Last night, I said that you looked like you were waiting for something.” Keith turns to him, face devoid of emotion, a piercing gaze directed on Shiro. The line of his shoulder is tense, and shift of his jaw was slow. Definitely not a fluke, something Shiro sees as a potentially sensitive topic for the other. The way Keith had said it, ‘looking’, had been loose and casual, unanticipated. A slip.

“Something specific you’re waiting for?” He prods, moving the pieces of beef against the egg. Keith doesn’t answer – and that’s something he’s beginning to note: the hesitant pauses, the pregnant silences and the feel of Keith’s eyes on him.

Keith hesitates a lot, now that he’s noticed. He’s not sure if it’s fear or awkwardness, just how he seems to hold himself back, look away before Shiro can make eye contact or how he ducks his head often and shifts the conversation elsewhere.

“We all wait for something.” Keith answers, breathing out. He puts the can on the table and crosses his arms over his chest. He turns his head and Shiro takes in the side of his profile, the straight nose and the line of his jaw and the curl of his hair against his ear. Dressed in black, he was striking.

The lining under his eyes are exhausted, and there are lines in the furrow of his brow and it almost seems like he can’t ever really put down his guard entirely.

Shiro shrugs, leaning back. “I guess. Well, when whatever it is you’re waiting for does arrive, what do you do?”

Keith gives him a look – not entirely heated, but it’s hooded, almost melancholic – and he’s looking away, leaving Shiro in the coattails of what that had meant. “Doesn’t really matter. You either do something about it or just keep denying it.”

“Run or fight, then?” He asks, chin on his hand as he rests his elbow against the table.

“What makes you think I’m fighting?” Keith angles his head, raising a brow. Shiro smiles back—just a bit.

“I’m good at reading people.”

Another amused look. “Really? So you know I’m waiting for something, what else do you get when you look at me?”

It was a challenge, lined in disbelief and Shiro frowns, crossing his arms over each other and leaning close on the table. He takes in the fall of dark hair across purple eyes, the crossed arms and the knife-sharp gaze – the creases of the leather jacket and the boots, the haphazard, crumpled shirt underneath. “The jacket. It’s old, not just the quality but the style. It meant a lot to you – probably why you hold on to it. The shirt though, it says you don’t really care about things – not most of things, anyway. You don’t care how you look and you certainly don’t care about what other people think of you.”

Keith looks at him, not breaking eye contact as he rests his head against his hand. Shiro takes a look at the shades. “It’s not just the shades, but the hair too. You don’t like people looking at you too long and you slouch your shoulders when you walk, like you’re trying to make yourself unnoticeable.”

“Call it preference not to be bothered,” was Keith’s dry repartee. Shiro’s lips twitch a bit at it, the irritation dotting the edges of the cool gaze.

“No, I totally get it.” He watches Keith scowl at him, and he can’t help the smile. “You keep to yourself, but you like to watch people. You like to observe. You stare a bit before you say anything because you’re unsure or you’re gauging the person out.”

Keith looks up at the ceiling. “Or maybe I’m just astounded by the level of stupidity some people have that I need a moment to question myself?”

He’s blown-out laughing now. “You really don’t like people?”

Keith shrugs with a shoulder, the neckline of his shirt riding down, collarbones and the line of his neck on display. Shiro looks from the curve back up to his eyes slowly. There’s something fervid – hot – in Keith’s eyes. “Generally speaking, no. I like individuals.”

“I see,” Shiro turns to look outside, at the outlines of people shuffling down the sidewalk and the light catching on the paint of the buildings. “Mind telling me about these individuals of yours?”

Keith takes one long look at him—and there’s no way that Shiro can miss the gleam of interest, the curl of heat and the tingle of his own attraction running lines of frissons against his own veins. The other ducks his head, lets hair fall into his eyes and the hollow of his collarbone is distinct. Shiro bites the inside of his cheek, leaning back. “There’s only…one, so far.”

Mauve looks to the left, returning to meet his gaze. “ _ He’s _ certainly singular. I don’t know what’s with him but I find myself coming back.”

“Must be something good,” Shiro comments, voice low. The food is left forgotten on the table, droplets slithering down the side of the can against it. Keith doesn’t look away and Shiro feels it cutting through every layer of his skin. “To keep you interested for so long.”

A shrug, the neckline falling lower and the skin paler in the shadows of the pub. “Who knows, really? I’m not sure if it’s worth staying. Usually nothing is.”

The line pulls Shiro’s attention away, watching the sifting of purple into black under the near-dimmed light—clouds moving against the morning sun—and he sees more than just heat there. Cards held close against a chest, words locked behind the lips and vagueness edging the line of secrecy. The tightness of the corner of his lips is a dead giveaway, Shiro thinks. A ghost full of penciled thoughts itching to spill out, and having forgot to open the door.

“Well, what does he need to do?” He asks, and Keith blinks. “What does he need to do to keep you to stay?”

Keith bites his lip, looking down—looking confused and lost, for once—and Shiro takes in the detail of scarlet on the skin, the slope of his nose. Keith raises his head. “He doesn’t need to do anything. He’s…nice. Nicer than most. Smiles a lot.”

Shiro breathes deep, leaning forward. “Go on.”

Keith shifts in his seat, the creak of the wood under his weight, and the crease of his jacket moving with the sway of his arm, curling over his knee as he pulls it against his chest. “I don’t get to meet a lot of nice people, and he’s…different. He’s warm.”

Keith frowns, like he doesn’t know what to say – and the glare does not have a target, glazed purple under the fringe. Shiro breathes his name, softly, and the other turns to him, eyes wide and bare and vulnerable.

The emotion is riveting. It’s the most he’s seen in Keith – not just the curl of sarcasm and wit against his lip, or the slinky evasiveness in every shift of his eyes or the quiet walls building up as hair falls into his face and he looks down. It’s not the hidden slivers of pain, morose, when amber of the counter lamplight plays with the color of mauve-purple, and it’s not the coldness that Keith radiates when the shades are on, a furrow to his brows and an almost-sneer on his lips.

It’s the vulnerability – and the open emotion, just the second of lost and hesitation not hiding behind the subtle diversions and throwaway comments and it—loosens the sharpness of his features, makes him look much more undefined. Untethered.

“What makes it hard to stay?” The question is worded almost silently, fragile. The vulnerability fades as Keith ducks, and Shiro feels disappointment crashing in.

“It’s not him,” Keith responds, brusquely. “It’s never him. Sometimes, it’s me. I don’t stay.”

Shiro frowns, almost reaching out to him. “Why don’t you stay? Why do you keep running?”

Keith breathes out of his mouth and crosses his arms, and Shiro knows he doesn’t miss the awkward movement his hand makes. “People make mistakes. They don’t always disappear.”

It’s a lot – and Shiro can’t say anything as Keith sighs, the sound of it is heavy and pent-up, like he’s held on to it for so long that he’s forgotten how to let go. It sticks to his skin, in his veins, and crawls out of every pore and Shiro wonders how Keith looks like with all of those chains and locks gone, every secret undone and every hesitation erased.

He’d even be more striking – more beautiful. Bright purple-mauve eyes laughing, hair in the wind and a smile on his lips.

“Maybe these mistakes just need to be acknowledged.” Shiro prods. Keith doesn’t answer – and Shiro is quiet, just watching the light lining the crown of Keith’s head, and tracing the angles and planes of his fingers, and his face is half-hidden in shadow. Outside, the noise of the traffic is dulled – deafened – and barely makes it past the crevices and nooks.

Something has changed.

* * *

**Daily Monitoring Report:**

_ Patient: Keith Kogane _ __  
_ Age: 14 _ _  
_ __ Sex: Male

_ Keith continues to distance himself from his peers at the center, choosing to isolate himself during community time and lacks participation. He is quiet, but is easily provoked and will resort to physical aggression when doing so. He lacks restraint and does not provide justification for his actions. Curriculum performance matrix averages at  _ **_C_ ** _ and, according to Warden Thace, does not seem to aim for higher. These displays of disruptive behavior are symptomatic, though the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder is still unclear as there is lack of comorbidity and psychological dysfunction. Keith’s behavior may have been shaped from early childhood trauma of witnessing his parents’ violent murder, as Keith still states – to this day – that it was a member of the Galra crime family that killed his parents. Any mention of his parents can possibly trigger aggression in the patient, and is – thus – a subject best avoided. _

_ Several sessions with Keith over the last six years has provided insight on this particular topic, as Keith, when he does choose to express during the check-up, continues to revolve around his parents’ murder. This cyclical, almost obsessive back-and-forth when it comes to his parents’ deaths has made it clear to me that the past holds high regard, and control, over his present– and Keith has not given me a reason to believe that it will not hold control over his future as well. _

**_Dr. H. Honerva_ ** ****__  
**_Child Psychiatrist_ ** **_  
_ ** ****_LIC Juvenile Detention Center_

* * *

Keith’s in the shadows of the alley, unable to sleep, a bag slung over his shoulder and a canister of whiskey in his bag, when he hears the noise. It’s faint – almost impossible to hear had there been noise, but this area of Hell’s Kitchen had always been on the quieter side, and he’s surprised. The mini-mart beside him is open, bright neon lights feeding off to the partially-lit street across  _ V’s _ . Keith stands from his seat on the dirt, zipping his bag. The pub is dark – and he remembers Shiro mentioning that Matt was out of town, and considering Pidge’s lack of contact, he can guess who he’s with and where.

His apartment was stifling – the unwashed clothes strewn on the floor, the broken bottles by the trash can, the still-broken lock on the door, the suffocating darkness – and he needed to get away, needed to breathe and needed somewhere he can just sit and close his eyes and  _ fade.  _

Keith doesn’t want to think why his feet brought him here, to the alley across the pub and just staring – watching the amber lights play inside, watched the other patrons’ silhouettes in the windows and watched, his heart up in his throat, as Shiro smiled and laugh behind the counter.

It was dark now, and he’d been on the ground for hours and he has no idea what he’s doing as he crosses the street, ducking his head against the chilly breeze.

It had sounded like glass shattering but Keith sees no one straggling outside, loitering. The inside of the pub is dark as he approaches the door, and he squints through the glass. The light from the nearest lamp post doesn’t really help much, he can only see the backs of chairs by the wall.

He hears something crunch, and a curse, and Keith frowns. It sounds like Shiro.

He knocks on the glass twice.

Silence greets him but Keith stays, standing where the light can catch him as he waits. The seconds pass by, and there’s a rustle on the nearby tree and a breeze, so he pulls the jacket closer. He hears the sound of footsteps and Keith turns to the door, Shiro’s pale, exhausted face peeking out.

His hair was messy, like he just rolled off his bed, and his eyes are red and his skin covered in a thin film of sweat. Keith is quiet for the moment, watching the hesitation and the wariness in Shiro’s eyes gather. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I heard something break.”

Shiro doesn’t smile back, but his eyes do shift back to the pub and he breathes out, a bit ragged. “Yeah. Bottle fell. Sorry.”

Keith shrugs, feeling the almost-foreign line of concern in his veins as he tries to look for whatever words seemed appropriate. “Everything okay?”

He gets a hooded stare in response, and Keith almost wants to fidget under his gaze, bite the inside of his cheek or turn away, until Shiro’s eyes look up to his temple. Keith blinks, remembering the cut.

“What happened?”

Keith frowns at the evasion, but he keeps it to himself. It wasn’t his place to force Shiro to tell him everything just because they—what, they had breakfast, or whatever it was that happened the other day was called, and shared more than just simple pleasantries and suddenly that gave Keith the right to barge in and start demanding answers? He knows intimately on what it’s like to keep your cards close and keep your cheek in and he’ll even be more of a hypocrite if he forced Shiro to tell him.

Still, Keith’s not going to deny that he’s concerned.

“I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me,” Keith offers, compromising. Shiro’s brows furrow, doubtful. He doesn’t look friendly, not the way he usually is. He looks haunted, the circles under his eyes distinct and the lines on his face deep, like it’s something he’s done so many times before. He’s panting lightly, and his grip on the doorjamb is tight. Keith doesn’t look away – he’s seen it far too many times, in a mirror, for him to shy away.

“Offer you a drink over it,” Shiro finally says – grunts – as he walks off, and the standoffishness may have lashed at Keith on any other day, tipping the almost-ready scales to run him off but he doesn’t let it bother him, closing the door behind him. The pub is dark inside, but Shiro turns one lamp on, and Keith sees the shards on the ground.

“Take a seat, I’ll clean this up.” Shiro throws over his shoulder as he heads to the back, and Keith settles on the stool by the counter, his usual place, and watches Shiro return, a broom and a dust pan in hand. He doesn’t say anything as he bends and starts sweeping the shards against the pan, and it’s silent save for the tinkle of glass against each other.

Keith watches the slight tremble to Shiro’s hand – the real one – and the line of muscle over his shoulders is tense, taut and his jaw quivers with it.

Shiro places the pan by the side and stands back up, arms on the lower counter behind the bar and breathing raggedly – Keith can hear it in the silence and it takes a moment for Shiro to compose himself, wiping a hand down his face before he turns to look about. He grabs a bottle from the side and Keith’s lips part. “I got a drink with me, if you don’t mind.”

Shiro isn’t looking at him, even with his face turned. Keith feels the gaze somewhere over his shoulder as he watches the rise and fall of the other’s chest, before Shiro nods and places the bottle back. He’s not using his right hand at all.

“It’s not as fancy as what you got,” Keith starts, pulling the canister out as Shiro brings a stool over and places two rock glasses on the counter. Shiro makes a huffed-like noise that might pass off as a laugh. Might. “But it does its job.”

“Whiskey?” Shiro asks, voice hoarse. Keith tries to look at him, but Shiro’s eyes are a bit glazed over, half-in the present, half somewhere in his mind.

“What else?”

The dry line pulls Shiro from his stupor, looking up at him, eyes dark and troubled. Keith bites his lip and turns to the glasses, pouring the whiskey in. The amber liquid sloshes a bit, and Keith puts the glass in front of Shiro.

He hasn’t even finished pouring his own when Shiro grabs the glass and downs it in a go. Keith watches the movement of his throat before Shiro places the glass back on the counter.

“So,” Shiro starts – gruff – and he raises a hand to run through his hair, pushing it away from his forehead. “It’s almost four in the morning. What were you up for?”

Keith keeps his own glass close to his lips, taking a sip, before leaning back. The familiar, almost friendly burn of the whiskey in his mouth settles his nerves and the weight on his chest. It eases a bit – not much, but enough for him not to look away from Shiro’s hard gaze. “I keep odd hours. I don’t sleep much.”

Shiro snorts, looking down at the glass. “Digging for other people’s dirt?”

Keith raises his head, tiredly. “Sometimes. Mostly, it’s just for me to get some peace and quiet.”

“Well, sorry for breaking that, too.” There’s a bite to the words – and Keith’s never heard it coming from Shiro’s lips – but it doesn’t seem directed at him. Keith fall silent, watching the sweat dotting his temple and the dark patches on his grey shirt. Shiro’s right arm is hanging listless by the side and Keith takes another sip.

“A client backhanded me.” Keith says, suddenly, and Shiro glances at the cut on his temple. There’s curiosity and a question lurking in those eyes, and it’s enough to distract the man from the spite of his own words. “Didn’t like the answer she was looking for.”

“Shit.” The corner of his lips turn up at Shiro’s response. The other’s eyes are still on the cut, and he leans close. Keith doesn’t know what to make of the pounding of his heart, or the rush in his veins. “What happened?”

He settles the glass against Shiro’s, crossing his arms. “She hired me to tail her husband, thought he was cheating on her.”

“Was he?”

Keith gives him a look. “Obviously. When you’re suspicious enough to hire a shady private investigator, your intuition is pretty much on point.”

Shiro chuckles, disbelieving. He crosses his own arms and rests them on the counter. “Jesus. So, what? You tell her that her husband’s got someone on the side, and she decides to hit you with a table?”

Keith finds himself laughing – short, but it’s there and the granite of Shiro’s gaze softens a bit. He grabs the glass and drains it in one go, trying not to notice Shiro watching him wipe his mouth. “No table, actually. She had these huge expensive rings and she decked me before I knew what was happening.”

A brow is raised over a silver-taupe eye and Shiro leans his chin against a hand. “Christ, Keith. What did you do?”

Keith smiles at him, sees another growing on Shiro’s lips in response. “Nothing. We were in public, and she walked off before I even realized I was bleeding.”

He pours more into their glasses. “At least I got paid.”

Shiro shakes his head, face incredulous. “That’s some case. The worst I’ve had in this bar are two sixty year olds arguing on who’s going to get the bill.”

Keith chuckles. “That’s probably because you’re built like a bull and they know you can kick their asses if they fuck things up here.”

Shiro laughs at the thought, and Keith spends too much time watching the smile on his face as the other wipes the sweat off his skin – and the way he grits his teeth every time his right arm moves.

“What about you?” Keith asks, voice growing small. He doesn't really want to encroach on wherever he’s not wanted – and he doesn’t really want to put Shiro in a position where he doesn’t want to talk things that he’s not comfortable sharing.

He knows a thing or two about demons and each pound of flesh they want to take, and how much Keith holds on to whatever remains of him. He doesn’t want to take away that security from Shiro when he’s not willing to part with it.

Shiro’s laugh dies, and he looks down. His eyes harden, and his left hand curls into a tight fist. He holds his breath in, like he’s trying to calm himself, and Keith’s almost ready to apologize – to say the words, and that’s something he hasn’t done in a while.

Shiro makes him do things he hasn’t done in a long time.

The other’s fist loose and tighten, flexing. Shiro’s voice is hard, only a ghost of the earlier ease remaining in the notes. “Nightmare. Sometimes, they get bad.”

Keith keeps quiet and waits for Shiro to lower the walls himself. It’s not easy – relaxing your guard and opening yourself up to other people, baring the most vulnerable part of who you are and you’re unsure if people will take care of it or hurt you. A part of him wonders – quiet and faint and almost nonexistent – how some people can trust so freely, can be so  _ honest _ with who they were and not be terrified of getting hurt.

Of seeing your own ugliness looking back at you.

“It’s about the arm.” Shiro gestures to the prosthetic by his side. Keith looks down and spies the dark metal, black on steel, and sees the top end halfway up Shiro’s bicep and all of it runs down to the tips of where his fingertips would have been. He’s seen it move, sometimes, but not without the intricate mobility of a real limb. “When I lost it.”

Keith can feel the tension radiating off Shiro – and it takes everything he has not to reach out, not to extend a hand and place it over whatever he can, just to reassure Shiro that he’s here, that he’s not alone. Keith doesn’t, it’s not his place – and Shiro doesn’t know him, doesn’t know what he’s  _ done,  _ and he certainly doesn’t want to know.

If Shiro knows, it’s going to change everything. He won’t look at Keith with a smile.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he voices out, words as brittle as the silence underlying Shiro’s breathing. Eyes meet his, and they’re conflicted. “You don’t owe me any explanation, Shiro.”

“We made a deal. You told me yours, Keith.” Shiro mutters, and Keith sees him bite his own lips.

“Bullshit.” Keith cocks his head. “I had a bitch customer, it’s nothing. This isn’t.”

Shiro breathes out through his mouth, frustrated and strained. Despite his size and his muscle, he doesn’t look as strong and confident as he usually is. Not at all. There’s no sign of the lightness in his eyes at every joke, or the smile decorating his lips at every turn. It’s all gone, wiped away, replaced by haunted brown-grey eyes and a trembling fist.

“What if I want to?” Shiro asks, and it’s more air than words but Keith hears them. The almost fearful way Shiro asks has his chest tightening, his own hand gripping his knee hard enough to bruise. “What if I want to talk to you about it?”

It’s not—

When it comes to things like this, when it comes to the demons clinging to the backs of other people, when it comes to the emotional baggage and bullshit that clung to every human skin in each person’s face he comes across—

Keith’s learned to walk away from certain things, from things that he knows will hurt him later. He’s learned to turn on a step and just head the other direction, away from the incoming train wreck and collateral damage that will take more out of him than he has left to rebuild. When he deals with his clients, he does it professionally – behind a line and never willing to cross it.

But some cases stay with you, and sometimes, you can only run so far before you hit the wall.

“If it’s…” Keith pauses, feels Shiro’s gaze on him. “If it’s what you want.”

Shiro looks at him with a ferocity that’s troubling, that has his breath staggering and his hands sweating. Keith doesn’t know what the emotion is – he’s ran away far too many times to recognize the vulnerability for what it was – and he doesn’t know what about him makes Shiro look at him with such openness that he has to bite his tongue to keep himself from saying his name.

He wants to duck down, hide his eyes, turn away, but he made his move. He told Shiro it was okay. He had to stick to it, resolve to accept whatever was brewing in those taupe eyes.

“I want to.” Shiro repeats, and his voice is fragile – tender, holding on to a lifeline like a sailor to a tightrope in a maelstrom.

It’s a moment before Shiro starts talking, a moment of silence where Keith waits for him to find the strength to speak – the ice in his taupe eyes, the rigidity of his shoulders, the stone-still outline in the amber lamp light – and Keith can only do so much but wait. These days, waiting is what he does best.

“I used to be with the NYPD,” Shiro begins, voice neutral. Forced. Keith doesn’t comment, just lets Shiro find whatever was easiest for him to be able to speak, to stand. Some look for routine, Keith runs after the amber of whiskey. Shiro steels his voice and his lips. “I was captain of the district patrol services.”

Keith nods, inclining. Shiro doesn’t seem to notice, eyes glazed. “Last October, we got a 911 call. Her name was Hailey, she was sixteen. Her father had a gun on her mom. I was out patrolling with two others and we got the dispatch.”

Only the sibilant hiss of their breathing echoed in Keith’s ears, none of the noise from outside. The pub was their own world, the walls their own gates. It was just the two of them, and the quiet and Shiro’s demons.

“When we got there, the mom was already dead. Shot. Hailey was next, and her father kept screaming at her to shut up. She was crying. I could hear her outside and we tried to talk to the man about it.”

Shiro’s frown turns hollow, and his taupe eyes start to gleam liquid. He’s silent, just breathing – and it’s ragged and desperate. Keith slowly pushes the glass of whiskey to him, and Shiro blinks at it – for a moment – before he grabs the glass and downs the shot. He grabs his own and lets the maple and the alcohol fill the ugly weight in his stomach.

“It took hours. By the time it was over, pretty much half the district was there.” Shiro continues, voice wobbly. “We talked to him for hours, and he kept screaming at us. ‘Shut up, you fuckers or I’ll kill her too’, he said. ‘That’s your daughter, Jack,’ I told him. Told him to rethink what he’s done and what he’s going to do.”

The skin under Shiro’s eyes are wet and they glitter in the light. Keith pours more into his glass.

“I don’t know what went on inside, but something started to smell.” Shiro pauses, his face screwing up as he raises a fist to wipe under his eyes. “It was smoke. Something was on fire and it was coming from the house.”

“What happened next?” Keith asks, solemnly, as Shiro grabs his glass and takes another drink. The canister was almost empty, but neither cared.

Shiro coughed, wiping his lips. “We tried to bust the door down, but something was blocking it. A cabinet was in the way, and I could see through the window that the fire was coming from the living room. Jack had set the couches on fire, and his wife’s body was on it.”

“And Jack?”

Shiro’s eyes flashed steel. “He had ran up to the bedroom with Hailey and the gun. My boys managed to break the door down. By the time we got up, half the living room was already on fire. The fire bureau was on the way, but I couldn’t wait for them. There was a scared girl and her dad was aiming a gun at her. I couldn’t just stay back.”

Keith grips the counter hard at the desperation and fear in Shiro’s eyes.

“I ran up the stairs, ignored my men telling me to wait back. I wasn’t about to let a scared girl die. That wasn’t me. My job was to keep people safe.” Shiro ducks his head and looks at his hands, one steel and the other flesh. Only one trembles, yet – somehow – the listlessness of the right hand was more heartbreaking.

“The fire had gotten worse, and smoke started climbing to the second floor. People were already screaming outside, but I could still hear Hailey in the bedroom, crying. Jack kept on telling her to shut up.”

Shiro sniffles, grunting. “The door was open, and I got a clear shot at Jack. His wife’s blood was still all over him and the gun was raised, at Hailey. I knew then and there that this was going to end well if I don’t do anything.”

“What did you do, Shiro?” Keith asks, and he’s more than sure of the answer already.

Shiro looks at him, granite taupe. “I shot him. Temple. He died instantly.” 

_ It was more than he deserves _ . The thought runs by Keith but he only nods at Shiro. He can’t judge. He has no place, and Shiro did it to save a life.

“The fire had spread throughout the house, so I tried to carry Hailey out. There were no windows in the bedroom, so I opted to rush to the rear entrance.”

“And?”

Shiro’s fist trembles, and his form almost seemed to curl in on itself under the light. “Smoke was in our faces, and the fire had spread to the kitchen. We had to get out before it hit the gas line, but it’s easier said than done, especially when you can’t see shit.”

His hand moves to his prosthetic, and he grips it tightly. Keith’s heart bangs against his ribcage.

“We were on the stairs and I was carrying Hailey and I— _ God _ —Keith. I  _ tripped. _ ”

Keith sucks in a gasp, breathing tight as a sob escapes Shiro’s lips, the grasp he has on his own metal arm tight enough to  _ break. _ His shoulders were shaking, and his eyes were squeezed shut. “I tripped and we fell and, Jesus, I can still remember the sound of her head hitting the floor and, fuck, I had to get up and help her and she was out and her head was bleeding. I didn’t know if it was superficial or if there was some serious damage, I didn’t have  _ time _ —I couldn’t just leave her there—had to carry here out and—God, Keith, I couldn’t see anything and it was hard to breathe through and—“

Shiro cuts himself off, voice high-pitched and shaky, eyes bright and gleaming. Keith doesn’t realize that his hand had reached forward over the counter, to reach for Shiro’s.

“The second floor collapsed and all I remember was that I had to cover her and something hit my arm and it was on fire and, fuck, Keith. It was so painful and I couldn’t breathe and I had to keep her safe.”

Keith manages to start breathing, to force some semblance of strength into his voice at the abject display of emotion on Shiro’s face. “And?”

Shiro does this motion with his shoulders, like he doesn’t know whether to shrug or tremble. “I passed out. Lack of oxygen and shock. Part of the second floor had fallen on us, and a cabinet with it. I managed to shield Hailey from most of the damage, but my arm took the brunt.”

The metal arm. The prosthesis. The unmoving reminder of what Shiro’s lost.

“God, Hailey’s fine. She’s taken care of. I’m alive, and I don’t have an arm but other people got it worse. I don’t—I don’t know why I’m weak. I’m not weak. God, I can handle this. I can—fuck, I can do this. I’m not useless.”

“Shiro—“Keith gets out, heavy with emotion. Shiro doesn’t seem to hear him, eyes squeezed shut.

“I’m trying. I’m  _ trying.  _ God, why am I fucking this up? I’m trying to be  _ better _ .”

The breathing he hears is frayed at the edges, jagged and rough. Keith blinks away the sting in his eyes, incapable of anything but his presence as Shiro tries to get himself under control, tries to get his breathing back on the right track and still his shaking.

It was painful to watch – to look at someone desperate to breathe that they curl inwards, trying to hide from the world and just find some semblance of normalcy, somewhere they can breathe and not feel the choking, and the suffocating ichor in their lungs. Keith’s seen it too many times.

“Where did you grow up, Shiro? What’s the name of the street?” He prods, sitting up and leaning close. He can’t make his voice any louder – he doesn’t know how, as Shiro continues to shiver. The other looks up at him, half-dazed and half-afraid. The lost expression on his face has Keith repeating his questions.

“O-Oakwood Street.” Shiro answers, a bit unsure. Keith nods, tries to focus on the taupe gaze and the not blurriness and the loss of focus on the edges. “Good. What’s the next street over?”

Shiro grits his teeth, still breathing fast. “Jefferson Lane.”

“Good. What’s after Jefferson Lane?”

Shiro blinks as he tries to remember, his breathing regulating. “Clark Drive.”

Keith nods, and he finds Shiro reaching out for his hand – the one he still had on the table. Shiro’s grip is tight, almost painfully so, and if Keith had been any different, he would have been hurt.

He gets it, though. He gets the need to hold on tight to what keeps you standing, what keeps you grounded. He knows what it’s like to wake up from your nightmares and into inky darkness and struggle and cry out for something to hold on to, to tie and thread whatever remained of your mind and your sanity into the ground to keep it there and not be blown away like everything else had. Shiro needs that now, most of all. 

Keith squeezes back, feels the roughness and the calluses of the other’s grip but he doesn’t care. Shiro looks at him, full and open and Keith doesn’t look away.

“Say with me, Shiro. Oakwood Street. Jefferson Lane. Clark Drive. Say it with me.”

The other nods, breathing out the words no matter how uneven they might sound. “Oakwood Street. Jefferson Lane. Clark Drive.”

Shiro holds on to his hand like it’s his saving grace. Keith doesn’t want to let go. “Good. Oakwood Street. Jefferson Lane. Clark Drive.”

Slowly, and slowly, Shiro’s breathing starts to return to normal, and he stops shaking. Keith doesn’t let go, not yet, not until the taupe eyes stop sifting almost manically, and not until the other is fine – or whatever semblance of fine is left for people like him. People like them.

The pub is quiet except for their harsh breathing, and Keith just keeps repeating the words together with Shiro, voices low. The other is still sweating, the hair stuck to his forehead and his eyes still retain a bit of redness, his shoulders still quivering and his shirt damp, but it’s better. He’s better than what he was a while ago, and Keith knows – can see it – that he’ll be okay.

Shiro’s still holding on to his hand, but the tightness eases. Keith feels Shiro knead his palm, a silent apology for the tightness. His eyes are still on Keith, and they’ve gone liquid in the approaching dawn – the distant skyline brightening.

“I’m sorry.” The words are almost silent in between the breaths, but Keith shakes his head.

“If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t have stayed.”

He curls his fingers over Shiro’s hand – allows himself to be weak. Weak enough to want to hold on, weak enough to hold close. 

Shiro’s eyes are wide and vulnerable, and Keith feels his heart up in his throat. The ministrations on his palm are gentle, and Shiro’s thumb rubs circles softly against his wrist.

“Thank you.”

Keith can only nod, unable to look away from Shiro’s eyes as the other lets go of his hand and starts looking for something. He turns away, and Keith finally allows himself to blink and raise a hand to wipe his eyes, smells the scent of cedar on his wrist and his heart clenches painfully. Shiro turns back to him and he has a paper in his hand and a pen and he writes something down.

The note is slide towards Keith, and he spies a mobile number on it.

Shiro is looking at him something fierce, something heavy and loaded. Keith feels flayed open and ignited, and he trembles when Shiro reaches out to squeeze his hand again. “I’m not…much anymore, Keith, but if you want—if whatever it is you’re running from—if you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”

Shiro repeats the last two words with a squeeze of Keith’s hand, and the warmth swimming in the darkness and the ghosts in the taupe eyes has Keith biting his lips. The softness of the fragile, almost non-existent smile on Shiro’s lips and the morning light seeping into the pub erases the circles under his eyes. He’s not fine, not yet, but in time – he will be. 

Keith ducks his head, and he realizes that maybe he should have left when he still had the chance. 

* * *

**TRANSCRIPT OF WARD EVALUATION** **  
** Interviewee: Kogane, K.   
Interviewer: Warden Marmora, T.

[Marmora, T:  _ Keith, you know the rules of the center. Physical confrontation in response to aggravation is prohibited. We’ve been going circles around this temper of yours. Other wards and instructors have noted that you initiated action against other wards. _ ]

[Kogane, K remains silent]

[Marmora, T:  _ Keith, you know I can’t defend you if you don’t tell me anything. _ ]

[Kogane, K:  _ They started it! _ ]

[Marmora, T:  _ How did they start it? WItnesses say that you punched Jenkins first. _ ]

[Kogane, K:  _ He was being a piece of shit! He was making fun of my mom and dad, said they died because they had a pussy for a son! _ ]

[Marmora, T:  _ Keith, we both know that’s not true. Why the anger? Why the punching? You’ve been getting into more and more fights— _ ]

[Kogane, K:  _ I don’t start the fights! They fucking talk shit about my parents— _ ]

[Marmora, T:  _ Keith, even so, we can’t start hurting people over something like a joke. We both know the truth: your parents were good people, well-respected people and that they were mugged. Whatever Jenkins says doesn— _ ]

[Kogane, K:  _ They weren’t MUGGED! They were murdered! _ ]

[Marmora, T:  _ Keith, we’ve gone over this so many times. The police investigation ended it as a robbery. There was no indication that their murder was premeditated— _ ]

[Kogane, K:  _ No! You’re just like the rest! I know what I saw! It’s that mafia boss’s family, I know it! _ ]

[Marmora, T:  _ Keith, this is honestly getting us nowhere. Regardless of how your parents may have died, it’s not becoming of you to start attacking your classmates just because of a joke. If anything of this sort happens again, tell an instructor or visit my office. _ ]

[Kogane, K:  _ Fuck you! None of you believe me! Nobody fucking believes me in this shithole! _ ]

[Marmora, T: _Enough, Keith._ _Continue this violent behavior and you will be put in temporary isolation._ ]

[Kogane, K:  _ I’m going to make them pay. I can’t forgive them. I can’t. _ ]

_ Evaluation Remarks: _

_ Keith continues to display erratic aggression especially in regards to his parents’ death. He is volatile and easily triggered and will resort to physical confrontation. His performance matrix in his other subject continues to remain at C or lower and he lacks a fundamental drive to perform well. He is sixteen years old and will have two years left before he is of legal age and can be set out — however, if he does not improve or his behavior continues to deteriorate, we will be forced to recommend transition to legal criminal incarceration. _

_ Warden Thace Marmora _ _  
_ _ LIC Juvenile Detention Center _

* * *

When he hears something shatter against the wall, Keith bolts up, sweating and panting. He takes a look around, eyes wide, at the darkness of his bedroom and the soft light creeping through the windows. His chest feels tight — like sand and gravel down his throat and in his lungs — and it takes a moment for him to breathe, fingers clenching against the bed sheet as sweat trickles down by his temples. There’s a rushing in his ears, and Keith realizes it’s him panting and he breathes, tries to regulate it.

He looks to the right, to where the sound came from, and he sees the broken bottle on the ground. It had been on his nightstand, and he must have pushed it away in his—-nightmare, fucking panic attack? Christ.

All his senses are blaring and he feels too hot and too cold, his hands start to tremble and he bites his tongue to keep himself from crying out. He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to think of something else other than scarlet and crimson and the explosion of red against a white wall. He tries not to think of the little girl in the corner, looking up at him with wide eyes.

“Twenty—twenty-first s-street,” He breathes, repeats what that shit psychiatrist back in juvie said. “Thirty-sixth a-avenue—S-sixteen Oaks G-grove.”

He tries not to think of his dad falling to the ground, blood pouring out of his forehead. He tries not to think of his mom pushed to the floor, screaming, as she’s shot twice.

He’s still breathing fast, but he focuses on the numbers and the line of trees and the mounds. “Twenty-first street, Thirty-sixth avenue, Sixteen Oaks Grove.”

He tries not to think of cases that have you by the throat and he tries not to think of the horrified stare meeting his as a body falls flat on the ground, blood pooling around it.

Think of the brick-red lines of the buildings by the pharmacy on twenty-first. Think of the rush of cars and the grey-asphalt on thirty-sixth. Think of the tall trees, and the way the sunlight cut through the spaces in rays, shadowed and crepuscular — wondrous at Sixteen.

“Twenty-first street,” He manages to say without gasping, without wheezing. “Thirty-sixth avenue. Sixteen Oaks Grove.”

He presses his palms against his eyes, just breathing — think of breathing, focus on breathing. Follow the motion of air — up and down, in and out, oscillate. Don’t think of anything else.

He keeps on repeating the words, keeps thinking of the motion — and he thinks of the way the light turns Shiro’s eyes into silver-grey and he slowly learns how to breathe normally, learns how to let the air in, pass through and out. His chest doesn’t burn at every inhale, and his hands don’t twitch and shiver like they’re made of ice every passing second. He stops biting his lip, and ignores the taste of blood as he manages to calm himself down enough to open his eyes.

His phone is hanging by the side of the table, the charger wire still inserted. It’s wet in his hands, smells of cheap alcohol, and when he presses the home button, the screen is covered in a thin layer of amber. Wiping it away, he ignores the clock on the upper right corner — a blaring  _ 03:10 AM _ — and he sifts through his small group of contacts and settles at the most recent one.

It’s unnamed but Keith’s memorized the number with all the times he’s stared at it — too many times, almost with the intention take Shiro up on his offer. His finger had lingered over the call button too many times, always hesitating, even as the ticking minutes turn to hours and the stars fade in the coming dawn and he’s surrounded by shards, an old photograph in his hand.

Shiro—

Shiro has his own mountains to jump over. Shiro has his own bridges to cross. Shiro has his own demons to fight. It’s not like Keith’s not used to this — to this gaping hole in his chest where his mom and dad used to be, right between his lungs — and it’s not like he’s not used to waking up almost every night, gasping and desperate for air that he’ll take it anywhere he can: in the amber of a bottle, by the edge of a photograph or in the darkness of an alley across a closed pub.

Keith is—the thing Shiro doesn’t need. He doesn’t need a booze-loaded, scarlet carrying half-dead corpse clinging to his back, locked around his ankles as Shiro tries to move on with his life. Shiro doesn’t need another walking disaster carrying more regrets than air, clinging to a long-dead memory in an attempt to stall time and not think of the future and what it means, and he certainly doesn’t need Keith wrapping his hands around his throat and adding more and more demons to the pile that he has to fight.

Shiro doesn’t need Keith.

But—

Shiro—

He also said that—

If Keith needs him, for anything, he’ll be—

He presses the call button before he can make any more excuses, sets the phone against his ear and listens to the ringing before he can find another reason not to do this and ignore the growing bile and vomit rearing to slither out his throat like acid. He doesn’t even think of the ramifications, of the possibility that Shiro’s asleep, that he’s busy, that it’s three fucking AM and that nobody sane enough will answer a call at this time, even if it’s New York and that just because it’s Keith, that doesn’t mean Shiro’s going to—

“Hello?” Comes a groggy, half-awake voice and Keith can’t say anything, can only stifle the sob trying to crawl out of his lips.

Hearing Shiro’s voice — even rough with sleep — has Keith’s mind blanking out, and he finally realizes that this has been a stupid idea. He shouldn’t be disturbing the man’s rest, he knew intimately how hard it was to get a good night’s rest when it comes to nightmares that come again and again and this is going to be another thing to add to the pile of bullshit he’s caused—

“Keith?”

He presses his lips together, unable to hide the slight gasp that escapes as Shiro says his name gently and he doesn’t realize he’s trembling, rocking. “Keith, is everything okay?”

He shakes his head, even if the other can’t see it, and he ducks his head as his eyes burn. “Do you want to talk about it, Keith?”

It takes him a bit to get his bearings straight, for him to clear his throat with a cough and a sniffle. Shiro doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t drop the call and Keith can hear him breathing on the other end. Funny, how that calms him down. Funny, how he’s gone so long depending on nobody but the skin on his back and, now, the sound of Shiro’s breathing is enough to shift his gravity.

“There,” Keith pauses, clearing his throat. He presses the side of his hand against his eyes and wipes at the wetness. “There are cases that won’t let you go.”

Shiro is quiet on the other line, patient, and it’s not lost on Keith how this is exactly a reverse of what happened the other night. 

Keith swallows his spit and breathes through his lips, the exhale noisy and ragged against the phone. “Some cases get under your skin and it’s hard to forget them.”

“You can tell me.” Shiro answered on the other line, voice warm and patient, even through static. Keith closes his eyes as he leans his head against the wall, wondering how it would feel to lose himself to that voice — just the acceptance and the kindness that Keith’s never known well.

“There was,” he tries to make his voice stable, tries not to make it sound as shaky as it actually is. “There was this girl. Allura. Nineteen. NYU. Good grades, studied on scholarship. She had gone missing for almost a month.”

Keith can still recall her — if he looks through his laptop or the documents somewhere in his apartment, he can still remember her tan skin and silver-blond hair and blue eyes. She was kind, nice, friendly — said her classmates and friends. It was weird she had gone missing, left apartment rent unpaid.

“Her mom came to me, after the police turned the case up cold. I accepted it. I had my way of investigating, a way the police didn’t usually have.” Keith confesses, voice raspy. Shiro doesn’t say anything on the other line—

And it’s terrifying and not at the same time, how he’s talking about this with someone who was a former police officer, a police  _ captain,  _ but he doesn’t care. He can trust Shiro. He knows. Somehow, he just knows.

“I needed the money. I was low, barely ate anything to get through the week and I accepted the job, even if it wasn’t something I’d usually take. Anything with the police involved is off hands for me.”

He remembers how he had contacted Pidge, found links through the underworld lines and had Allura on watch-out. Pidge had first protested, just as vehement as Keith was with anything involving law enforcement, but she had relented after he promised that she wouldn’t be implicated in anything if shit hits the fan. He tried to keep that promise - he did keep that promise. It’s one of the few that he still can.

“Took a while, but I got the clues down — I got the details ready and I managed to track her down. She was still in New York - right under the police’s noses - in a shitty, holed up apartment in Bronx.”

“What happened to her, Keith?” Shiro prodded, gently, and Keith feels the tension in his shoulders loosening, even if his hand constricts  _ tight _ with what he was going to say next.

“She’d been kidnapped. Human trafficking.”

“Keith…” Shiro whispers, and Keith hears something sad and something angry, the edges of his voice tinged in emotion. Keith sighs, breathing out Shiro’s name.

“Yeah, it’d been shit. I tipped the police off but I couldn’t,” he swallows. “I couldn’t leave her there.”

He squeezes his eyes shut - tight enough to hurt - and he’s desperate, he wants to grab the nearest bottle and fling it against the wall or drain the contents down his throat in one go, anything to forget the crimson and the gunshots and just the repetitive image of all the wrong choices he’s made.

“I know, Keith. I know.”

Somehow, Shiro saying that is enough. He settles with pressing the phone closer to his ears and ignores the urge to crawl through the floor to his cabinet.

“I sneaked in and managed to get past the guards,” Keith doesn’t say anything about slamming a metal pipe against their heads and he doesn’t say anything about how easy it was for him run in front of a gun. “Found her in one of the rooms. She was...she was a mess.”

He focuses on Shiro’s voice and his smile and not the ache for the amber-burn of numbness and not the memory of Allura - beaten and half-drugged, naked and terrified.

“I had to get her out,” Keith can’t say any more about her — if he does, he wouldn’t be able to stop the vomit from upending out his throat. “There were others like her, there, in the other rooms, and the other floors. I can’t—I  _ couldn’t _ save all of them, I tried, Shiro, but I can’t—”

“I know you did, Keith. I’m proud of you for trying.” Shiro says, consolingly, and Keith—he fucking hates platitudes and adages, and he hates it when people try to shorten and simplify someone’s pain into something small and useless like ‘I know’, but Shiro—Shiro’s different. It’s honest, and it’s validating. Keith feels like he can breathe straight.

“We managed to get to the hallway but someone found us. It was the guy who bought her.” Keith swallows before continuing. “He pulled a gun out on us, and the police hadn’t arrived yet. I couldn’t—I couldn’t let Allura get hurt. Can’t let the others get hurt. Not after what they’ve been through.”

He keeps the memory of the asshole’s bullet finding its way into his shoulder. He keeps it to himself as he remembers running into him, trying to wring the gun away. He doesn’t want to remember what happened next.

“I managed to get the gun away from him,” Keith bites his lip. “But Allura—”

“What happened, Keith?”

“She shot him. Right in the chest.” His voice had gone low, his finger biting into the skin of his thigh as he grips it tight. “She managed to shoot it once, but it was enough. He died on the spot.”

“It was self-defense, Keith.”

“It’s not  _ that!”  _ He bites out, something ugly like guilt and regret coalescing with the blood and the memory of Allura’s haunted eyes as she pulled the trigger, or how the gun had fallen from her hands and she had fallen to the ground, crawling back until she hit the wall, screaming. “It didn’t have to be her. She didn’t have to be the one to kill another person.”

Shiro says his name, hoarse and sad.

Keith wipes his eyes, bangs his head against the wall. “She wanted to become a doctor, that’s what her mom said. Wanted to save lives. Never wanted to hurt anyone.”

“Keith, he hurt her—”

“I could have shot him. I could have killed him myself. She didn’t need to have blood on her hands. She didn’t need to have it staining her and marking her and making her remember how it feels to kill over and over every  _ fucking  _ time she closes her eyes.”

It could have been Keith — it wasn’t like he was whole to start with, like he was  _ innocent _ to start with. “If I had been faster and stronger. If I could have done something, it wouldn’t be her that would be waking up with nightmares every fucking time—”

“It’s not your fault, Keith. It was the sick asshole’s fault.”

Keith grips the phone tight enough for it to dent. “Hadn’t he done  _ enough _ to her? He didn’t need to turn her into someone like—”  _ Like me. _

“Keith...this isn’t everything, is it? Shiro asks at the silence that follows Keith’s abrupt end of the sentence. The darkness of the room and the faint light from outside blurs in his vision as he shakes his head.

“No,” but it’s  _ close _ enough. Close enough to the truth — one that, if he admits, will have Shiro turning away from him. Permanently.

“What do you need me to do, Keith?” Shiro presses, calm and quiet and kind.

It takes everything for Keith not to blurt out every secret he’s hidden, all the recklessness and one-minded path to vengeance he had started that ended with him losing more than what he has left. He can only breathe noisily and wipe his lips as he tries to look for something to say, something to fill the silence that didn’t admit half, if not the entirety of what he wanted and what he can’t have and what he’s lost—

“Can,” he starts, on gritted teeth and every fucking chance he’s acquired in the last few years. “Can you be here?”

It doesn’t even take Shiro half a minute to answer. “I’ll be there in five minutes. Will you be okay by yourself?”

He’s gone longer than five minutes by himself. He’s gone longer than a day, a month, an entire year by his lonesome. Sometimes, on the nights that are too long — the nights where the ghosts of his mom and dad lurk in every shadow and corner — it almost seems like he’s spent all his life alone. “Yeah, yeah. Five minutes, right?”

“Yes, Keith. Five minutes. I promise.” Shiro says, and the words are sincere and tender and Keith tries to memorize how it sounds. “Okay?”

“Okay. Five minutes.” The call ends and Keith’s phone falls to the bed and he wraps his arms around his legs, pulled up to his chest.

He doesn’t recall rocking back and forth, doesn’t recall sobbing into his chest, and he doesn’t recall the repetitive mantra of twenty-first street, thirty-sixth avenue and Sixteen Oaks Grove. He doesn’t remember counting the seconds, starting over the moment he hits sixty, and he doesn’t remember shutting his eyes from the darkness and the glow of amber on the window sill.

But—exactly five minutes later—when there’s a knock on the front door, he’s out of bed, treading through the mess and opening the door with the broken lock—

And Shiro is there—his outline painted in the low orange light of the hallway, and his hair is still messy, and he’s in a soft grey sweater and jogging pants and rubber shoes and his eyes are worried and honest as he takes Keith in, lips parted to say his name—

And Keith’s wrapping his arms around the broad form and a strong arm makes its way over his waist and Shiro’s lips by his ear. “I’m here, Keith. I’m here.”

He doesn’t know how to feel — for the longest time, he’s had to be content with knowing that there’s nobody waiting to hold him on the nights he wakes up, scream locked in his throat. For the longest time, he’s had to be okay with turning to the amber and the whiskey to keep him warm when he’s frozen, inside-out, and the only person there for him was his own exhausted, haunted reflection.

But Shiro’s here — and he smells like cedar and rum and the warmth of  _ V’s  _ — and, to Keith, it’s everything.

* * *

_ LIC Juvenile Detention Center _ _  
_ _ Security Incident Report: _

  * Filing incident report, dated July 13, 2009. Security breach at 4:14 AM. Fire alarm was falsely raised, and reported headcount short of one ward: Keith Kogane. Warden T. Mamora has authorized search of surrounding areas. Once Kogane is arrested, he will be placed in temporary isolation as this matter will be escalated to juvenile courts.



* * *

Shiro wakes to the sound of morning traffic, sunlight in his face and the press of arms around his waist. He doesn’t recognize the grey curtains, a bit on the dirty side, that settled against the window, and he certainly doesn’t recognize the haphazard pile of clothes on the floor — and the broken shards of a bottle by the trash can — and it takes him a moment to remember where he was.

Keith’s in his arms, asleep, and Shiro has him pulled close. He can feel the other’s breathing against his chest, and he can feel the other’s hair bunching up by his nose. Still, despite the awkwardness, he doesn’t pull away from Keith.

When he had arrived last night—morning—he had expected nothing of this sort. He had expected Keith’s usual standoffishness, having recovered in the five-minute run from the pub to his apartment, and he had expected the same cold evasion—-

Except, things  _ have  _ changed between them, starting the night Shiro had confessed what had happened that made him lose his arm and when Keith had reached out, repeating the names of the streets and lanes he grew up on, and that old pain in his purple-mauve eyes, Shiro knew then and there — it would be impossible for things to go back to how they were before all this.

When Keith was just another ghost by the corner of the counter, silent and observant. When Keith asked for whiskey and nothing more, kept himself silent and watched Shiro make the drinks.

Keith looks so...peaceful when he’s asleep, when he’s in Shiro’s arms and just clinging to him with a fierceness that bordered on desperate. Keith always looked on guard, hooded eyes and long hair and evasive words. Right now, Shiro only sees the downturn curve of his lashes, or the slight partition between his lips as he turns his head deeper against Shiro’s chest — there’s none of the ice in the purple-mauve, or the restrained smile that could only be detected in the slight curl of his lips, or the constant fall of his hair into his eyes, hiding them. 

He looks younger like this, and it occurs to Shiro that he barely knows Keith—he doesn’t know where he’s from, how old he is, what school he came from and who his parents were. He doesn’t even know his last name. It’s a realization that leaves him flat-footed and short, like he’s taken one too many chances on something he’s not even sure.

Except, he does know a few things.

Keith like his whiskey neat, and that he’s more comfortable with being quiet than talking, and that his purple-mauve eyes turn black under the shift of light.

He also knows that Keith’s more than just the silence and the subtle diversions. He knows Keith’s a good person — one that’s willing to listen to a disgraced police officer trying to move on, with less parts than he originally started with. He knows Keith listens to every word he says, and he takes them all in — important and intimate — and he knows Keith has an idea, an inkling, on what it’s like to wake up and feel like the world’s gone far too fast for your own liking. He knows Keith lists down streets and lanes to help him in trying to get his breathing in control, and he knows the way Keith’s hand feels in his—and, now, he knows how Keith feels in his arms.

It’s not much — and Shiro isn’t really in a position to be choosy  — but it’s more than zero, more than nothing.

He knows Keith’s the type to act like he doesn’t care, but he does. He says he doesn’t care about people, but he does. He cares about what happens when you pull a gun—more than just the trajectories and the physics, but also the bullet finding its mark, also about a life extinguished—and he cares about the damage of taking a life, especially when you never wanted to in the first place.

He knows how ugly the world can get, horrible and disgusting enough to lose hope, and Keith looks like he’s lost hope — some days, most days — but Shiro knows that Keith still tries. He may not have the memories or the understanding for it, but he can see the attempt. He can see how Keith gets up every day and tries to brave through it all.

Shiro doesn’t miss the growing pile of broken bottles and shards in the trash can, or the ones littering the shelves. He doesn’t miss the open cabinet doors, and how the drawers have more space than clothes. He doesn’t miss the spartan absence on the nightstand or on the coffee table or on the kitchen counter. He doesn’t miss the loss, obvious in the spaces between what’s there.

He also doesn’t miss the withheld words, and the cut sentences. It’s fine, Shiro thinks. Until Keith’s ready to share — to open himself entirely — Shiro’s fine with what he can get, what inch and what crumb left to him.

Keith shifts in his arms, a disgruntled sound rising from his throat, and Shiro turns to him — breath held — as the lashes move and he sees purple-mauve look up at him.

There’s nothing but silence in the room, and the distant honking of the cars, as Keith blinks before groaning, turning his head away from the light.

Shiro doesn’t say anything, just lets his lips turn up in a small smile at the display of vulnerability—and waits for the purple eyes to peek at him.

“You stayed.” Keith asks—says, and on the surface, it sounds flat and uncaring and cold, but Shiro hears the surprise and the honesty and the disbelief.

And the idea—

Somehow, the thought of Keith expecting him to have gone up and leave in the middle of the night, has Shiro’s chest tightening, a weight growing in between his lungs and in his stomach.  _ Has no one ever stayed before? _

The purple-mauve eyes are sharp, shifting, and Shiro can see the still-present disbelief and the fragile hope and it just—has no one ever stayed for Keith? When people see him — see the dark hair and the purple eyes and the quietly restrained kindness — do they only see someone not worth staying for, not worth greeting in the morning once the night has passed?

And maybe it’s because of the alcohol and the caustic wit, or maybe it’s because of the lining of something sorrowful — something sad that has festered into despair — in the corners of the mauve, or the down-turn of his lips, or maybe it’s because, sometimes, people can’t really find it in themselves to care for anything and anyone but themselves—

And nobody ever expected Keith to turn up, one night, when Shiro needed someone to be there.

And—the thing is—since that night, things have changed. When Keith had held on to his hand, repeating the same words until dawn arrived, Shiro knew that whatever opportunity was left for him to back out, to turn tail and  _ run _ had long past and beyond reproach. He’s long sold his chances of leaving and, if Keith asked for him to stay, he would do it in a heartbeat.

Shiro pulls him closer. “Yeah. I did.”

_ For as long as you want me to. _

* * *

**_QUEENS, NY —_ ** _ Just a day before Christmas, a local gun store was found ransacked. Police officers are currently combing the area for the thief, and the stolen item, a standard-issue Walther P99.  _ **More on page 4...**

**_LONG BEACH, NASSAU COUNTY, NY —_ ** _ December 24, 2011; In W Chester street, at 11:43 PM, just seventeen minutes to Christmas, Sendak Galran (38) is found dead in the Yurak, a four-story apartment complex. The victim was shot twice, and his body was found inside a bedroom cabinet. Evidence in the apartment has linked Sendak Galran to Zarkon Galran, notorious head of the Galran family crime syndicate that had plagued New York in the late 1990s. In 2004, Zarkon Galran was arrested by former Chief of Patrol Hal Kogane, and his death sentence ensured the end of one family of the criminal underworld. Hal Kogane, along with his wife, were also brutally murdered in late October 2005, leaving an orphaned son behind.  _ **More on page 14...**

* * *

Keith settles on the couch of the living room, watches Shiro’s back as he prepares something on the kitchen counter. The blanket thrown over it is in his hands, bunched, as Keith tracks the movement of the other’s shoulder blades through the grey sweater and tries not to think—

—tries not to ingrain Shiro’s silhouette, here, in his own house — in something that he can almost say was his own — into his mind, permanently lined and tattooed against the grooves of his brain. It’s no use, honestly, hoping for what’s not possible. Keith knows that, one day, he’ll say something, or something happens and he’ll give himself away. You can’t breathe on secrets and expect the world not to notice. Someone will. Time always runs out.

But, for now, if he can—he wants to remember this. He wants to remember someone inside his own apartment and not just the specters of who he has lost, and what he had to give up for his old anger. For a moment, he can almost believe that he could have this—

Wake up and find someone in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, and Keith would stand by the door jamb, heart full and overflowing with want and a tight tenderness that makes it hard to breathe sometimes. Maybe open his eyes and find them across him, under the blankets, and he doesn’t have a face in mind — no particular features, no identifiable smile — but Shiro’s silver-taupe eyes come up, and it’s the scent of cedar and rum against his skin that Keith smells and it’s the soft smile when Shiro turns and gives his way, bringing two bowls to the couch, that Keith has lining the walls of his fantasies.

Shiro settles on the space next to him on the couch, and it’s small and rickety, and it’s form trembles a bit under Shiro’s weight, but it holds. A warm bowl is placed in his hands — scrambled egg and rice — and Keith looks up at him from beneath his fringe, finds Shiro already staring back.

The apartment is a mess. Half the curtains are still drawn, and only pale light of the kitchen flooded the living room. The shards have been swept, but the remaining musk of whiskey is permanent, seeping into the woodworks and the cloth and into Keith’s own veins. His clothes have been piled up in the corner, waiting for one more day that Keith will procrastinate on going to the laundry. It’s not—he’s not the kind of person that people look at and think  _ ‘I want to stay’ _ .

But, Shiro stayed. The thought has his eyes burning, and he looks down at the food, grabbing a bite — ignoring the twinge in his chest in knowing Shiro’s thigh is pressed against his. Even if it’s just now, for the moment, it’s enough. Once Shiro knows the truth, he’s not going to stay and Keith’s not going to force him to.

The fact that he did  _ now,  _ for this one short moment, is enough. It’s the longest someone had. It’s the longest Keith’s allowed himself to want to have.

It’s quiet - silent - between them, and Keith’s surprised no one hears the hammering in his chest at every movement, at every press of Shiro’s thigh against his, or the rub of his shoulders, or Shiro reaching out to wipe the stray rice grain off Keith’s cheek with a thumb. Shiro smiles at him, tight-lipped, but it reaches his eyes and Keith can’t help but duck his head and inch closer, feel the warmth tumbling off the grey sweater and gold-tan skin and the silver-taupe eyes.

“What do you plan to do next?” He asks, and Shiro hums. It’s a question for the day — for what happens next — but Keith feels it’s more than that.

It’s more than just daily itineraries and grocery lists, and it speaks of something deeper — like the nighttime ghosts that crawl out of their skin, cling to their backs and whisper old hurts and mistakes over and over until it’s the only thing they hear, and it also speaks of something closer — like the warmth between them, the bond and the undeniable tension. There’s something there, Keith is sure, and the question is on who is willing to make the first move, and if it’s worth it.

Keith’s unsure of the last one, most of all.

“I’m not sure,” Shiro admits, and his voice is a bit hesitant as he leans back. The bowl is nestled in between his legs, making it easier for him to eat with one hand. He sets the spoon against the bowl, and Keith feels his arm over the rest of the chair, and it’s pleasant against the skin of Keith’s neck as he leans against the couch. “Before the fire, opening a pub had always been a backburner dream. Now, it’s all I have left and I don’t want to give it up. It’s...nice to be surrounded by people, hear them laugh. It’s good.”

His outline is tinged in amber and grey, light and shadow and when Shiro turns to him, his eyes are gleaming in the shadows. Keith nods, doesn’t know what to say. He’s gone so long on his own silence and his own mistakes that he’s forgotten how it feels good to be around other people.

“People like your pub,” he manages to say, and it’s true. He doesn’t miss the amiable atmosphere, or the easiness in the laughter of the patrons. He doesn’t deny that it’s part of the reason he goes back every week, and the other is sitting across him. “It feels warm. It feels like home, even for those...who don’t have one.”

Shiro’s eyes are hot on his skin, and Keith doesn’t pretend not to see the gleam of want and something deeper than that — and the thought scares him, the idea that someone can look at him and think ‘ _ I want you’ _ and it’s not just his own imagination, or his own insanity. He knows it’s real, he knows it in the way the fingers around his shoulder start to trace shapes over his nape, and he knows it in the way Shiro looks over his nose and down at his lips, follows them as they part.

And Keith doesn’t — can’t deny that he wants Shiro, but it’s more than just the seam of his muscles, or the handsome face and the delightful curl of his hair. He wants—he wants to know how it feels to have Shiro look at him like he’s something good, something worth keeping. He wants to know how it feels, if his insides turn to mush or if his heart flies up to his throat or his entire body combusts, if Shiro looks at him with something bright and burning, like affection, like devotion, like—love.

He wants to know how it feels when he’s worthy of that — most of all.

“I think,” Shiro murmurs, and Keith blinks, watches him swallow, watches the movement of his Adam’s apple and Keith itches to press himself against the seam of his neck, like last night, and breathe in cedar and feel nothing but the painful-painless constrict of Shiro’s arms around him, his mind blanking out — no nightmares, no demons, only the beating of Shiro’s heart under his ear. “I think I’ll visit Hailey.”

He blinks, watching the determination form in Shiro’s eyes. “Are you sure?”

The other nods, and the smile that he gives Keith is strained, but it’s genuine. “Yeah. It’s been a while and I did promise her more visits. I think it’ll help, with the dealing, to remind me that I didn’t lose it for nothing.”

He goes quiet, settles with just watching Shiro look at nothing and everything, and his eyes are gone grey with his memories, and Keith watches the inflections of pain and hope run across them, bright even in the darkness.

And it hits home — over and over — how Shiro’s a good man, and Keith’s brows furrow as his eyes sting. Just a good man trying to be better than the rest, to be better than the uncaring, apathetic shadows and greyed-out faces and trying to make the world a better place. Dad had been like that. Mom had been like that.

Keith stifles the cry in his throat, and locks the sob in the pit of his stomach, like the rest of all the secrets and old pains and ghosts.

The arm, the metal one, is still resting against Shiro’s side, and Keith traces the grooves and the notches, the knobs and the artificial joints, and he wonders if Shiro’s thinking about the pain of losing it — the fire and the scream of a scared girl and he wonders if Shiro’s ever doubted, ever woke up one day, or night, in the middle of a nightmare and regretted saving someone’s life.

If the loss of his arm had made him question if he had made the right choice, if he feels the same claws of regret and emptiness draw blood from his neck until his screams bubble and starts frothing, and if Shiro’s like Keith that way, too. 

If Shiro spends every second since the fire wishing, with a desperation that borders on crazy, that time starts turning back, and he can rethink his choices.

“Do you think—” The spoon is pressed tightly against the rice and the egg, and Keith lets go of it before it bends. His thumbnail presses into the skin of his index, and he keeps it there. Lets the bite and the dull ache remind him that he’s still here — let the feeling of Shiro’s fingers against his nape settle and remind him that he’s breathing and that he’s not out of his skin and lost to the tides. “Do you really think that acknowledging our mistakes can help us move on from them?”

The amber of the whiskey bottle on the shelf of the cabinet gleams from the side, and Keith spares it a glance — and his hands ache, his lips need the burn, the dullness of the needle-sharp, acute pain that’s half his chest, and his entire soul, and he wants to crawl to it and smash it against his face, feel the liquid seep into every pore until he’s swimming with it. He looks away and focuses on Shiro’s eyes instead, even if it pains him to do so.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be able to move on, completely,” Shiro admits, voice low and gruff, and the fingers on Keith’s neck move to his shoulder, and it grounds him. “But it’s a start, at least. I’d like to think it is. I’d like to think we can still make it out with more parts than we’ve lost.”

His vision loses focus, everything blurs and Shiro turns into a miasma of gold-tan and grey. “I don’t want it to change anything.”  _ Between us. _

Keith feels the hand on his shoulder run up to his neck and his jaw, the thumb under his chin and the fingers trailing by his temple. Keith allows himself — just once, just for this moment — to turn and press his lips against the thumb. Shiro’s voice is wobbly when he speaks. “I can’t say it won’t change anything—”

He feels the press of Shiro’s forehead against his, and Keith breathes him in, and his chest is too tight and too free, and his muscles are lax and withered as Shiro moves, and presses a kiss against his hair. “But I’ll be here, if you’ll be here.”

The thing is—Keith believes him. He hasn’t believed in anything for so long — no God, no graces and no forgiveness — but he believes in Shiro.

He makes his choice.

* * *

_ Envelope 1: _

_ Keith, _

_ I don’t know where you are right now, but I know that alarm didn’t pull itself by accident. All these years, I’ve tried my best to guide you the best I could and I can see that what I’ve done hasn’t been enough. You’ve become so angry and so jaded and so hopeless, and it pains me that I can only do so much to help fix what’s been broken. _

_ You’re going to need money, soon. You can’t just live off the streets, and you’re nearly eighteen. Once you do, and I’m sure you know, you’re going to try to get your parents’ inheritance. I’ve left instructions with your father’s attorney on Hal’s last will. _

_ Keith, before you do anything rash and stupid, read the letter. Read it, and be angry, and breathe. Don’t turn this into a mistake. _

_ Thace _

_ Envelope 2: _

_ Letter addressed to my son, Keith Kogane, upon my death: _

_ Keith, _

_ If you are reading this, then I’m not here anymore. I don’t know if your mom is still with you, and I pray to God she still is, but if not, then she’s with me and it only pains me that you’re the only one left. It doesn’t matter if you’re still 4, like right now, asleep in Krolia’s arms, or if you’re 40 with your own family, with my grandchildren and my daughter-in-law. Hell, even a son-in-law. Doesn’t matter. You’re my son, and you and your mother are and will always be the most important thing to me. _

_ I don’t know how I’ll die — if it’s because of old age, surrounded by my family and everything I cherish or if it’s on the line of duty. I’ll be honest, and I hope that a time will come that you can understand where I’m coming from, but I’m fine with both. You might think I’m crazy and I’m an idiot for wanting to die on the line of duty, but I’m good with the idea that I died trying to make this world safer for you and your mother. There’s nothing more important, not even my own life, than your safety. I hope that, when you’re older and you have someone important to you — so important that watching them sleep makes your heart ache and all you can do is think of what’s ahead, what you need to do because the thought of them disappearing kills you — and you’ll see things from my point of view. Keith, you’re the most important person in my life, and you’re my son and I love you with all of my heart. _

_ Being a cop is a dangerous job and it’s not just the nut jobs that steal things from other people’s houses, or the sick perverts who harass others on a daily basis. Sometimes, being a good person and fighting for good will land you in the crosshairs of your enemies, and being a good person will bring you a lot of enemies. _

_ I have this goal, Keith. I want to make this city safer, and what I’ve been doing in the last few years is probably going to put a red mark on my back and make me the number one target in New York, but if I can do this - if I can put Galra in his place and behind bars, dead if need be - then it’s worth it. The world will never be completely safe, but it’ll be safer without him and it’ll be safer for you. I do this, Keith, so that nobody else - least of all, you - has to. _

_ You’re still 4 years old, and you still trip when you walk and you have no idea how much it scares when I’m not there to catch you, when your mother and I aren’t there to shield you from how ugly this world can get. I never want you to be hurt, I never want you to see the world for what it is and have it change you. You’re such a good, good person, Keith, and even if you’re still 4, you still cry when we walk past a stray cat you can’t bring home and you’re always sharing your toys with the next door neighbors’ kids even if they accidentally break it. You make me have hope, Keith, that there’s still good in this world. Your kindness, your goodness, the easiness that you have when you smile and you smile so much, you laugh and tell me ‘I love you’ even if it sounds like ‘i wab ooh’ and you tell me that every day, every second of every day and you call me ‘wabby’ instead of ‘daddy’ and you just complete my world - you and your mom. _

_ I pray I can be there. I hope that I can still be there - to watch you grow up. Watch you get your first toothache. Hold your hand when you’re scared because it’s your first day at school. Come home and see you running up to me and jumping into my arms, excited to talk about your day, a crayon in one hand and a drawing in another. I hope I can still be there, see you grow, hear your voice break in puberty and, even if your mother won’t like it, be there to see you do the stupid teenage things I’ve done. I’ll probably have to ground you and punish you, even if the idea has me laughing because I had done the same thing back then. Maybe I’m putting too much on hope, and pulling too much on fate, but I wish I can still be there — see you walk out of the house, nervous for your first date. See you come home smiling like an idiot because, yeah, she or he definitely likes you and only an idiot will not like you, Keith. I want to see you graduate, see you land your first job and you’ll make me proud, like you’ve always done, by just being you. By just being who you are, Keith, and that’s being good. Because you’re a good person. _

_ Never lose that goodness, Keith. Never lose the hope, the kindness and the strength to see something better in people, no matter how ugly they can become. I can never protect you, not entirely, from the world and I dread the day that I’m not there to hold your hand anymore and the only thing I can leave you is just my hope that you’ll be better - that you  _ _ are _ _ better - and that you are so much better than every shitty, ugly, horrible thing people have done. For so long, I’ve lost my faith in people but when you were born, when I saw and heard you cry for the first time, you made me have faith again. Don’t let the world turn you into something you’re not — don’t let it eat away at your light, at the hope you bring with you. Whatever happens to me, to your mother, or to us — don’t let it turn you into a shell of what you could be. It’s too high a price to pay, Keith. _

_ If you need to, be angry, say the words and feel the rage — and let it go. Don’t let it fester and turn into poison inside your heart. Do the one thing that I’ve found impossible to do:  _ _ forgive _ _. _

_ You are, and will always be better than what I can become, Keith. You are the best part of me, and you can be so much more. Just have faith, just have hope, and just believe. _

_ I love you, son. That will never change, no matter how much time passes. I hope that this is enough, if just a bit, to get you through the rough times. Your mother loves you, and I love you so much. _

_ I love you. _

_ Dad _

* * *

 

Shiro wipes his eyes with a fist and he hopes that the redness of his gaze isn’t obvious. The thing is — even if it is, he doesn’t care. Let them see. He hasn’t felt this light in a long time. He raises a hand and waves to Hailey and her grandmother and smiles wide as she waves back. The burn on her neck and up the side of her face has long healed, but she smiles brightly, like it’s not holding her back. She’s hopeful, and she doesn’t let the past and the nightmares and the mark hold her from living.

He knows it’s not as easy as saying it for what it is — and he knows that she still has her own demons to face, but seeing her smile like that, despite what happened, despite all the shit life has thrown her way, it gives him hope.

And when he thinks of hope, the image of Keith forms in his mind and the weight on his chest eases some more. He knows Keith isn’t completely honest with him, but Shiro isn’t really fazed by it. He’ll take whatever Keith gives him, be it his entire life or just a fraction of it.

His phone vibrates in his pocket, and he pulls it out as he heads down the street. It was still early in the morning, close to noon, and there were a lot of people about. Cars speed by, and he ignores the rushing sound as he spies Keith’s number on the screen.

Pressing it to his ear, Keith’s voice is low on the other end, but he can heart it over the din of the Williamsburg traffic. “Shiro?”

“Keith,” Shiro greets. “Hi.”

The other is line quiet, and Shiro waits for him, looking at the passers by, avoiding the bag of one close to him. He can smell the heat off the asphalt, and the fumes of a nearby car. “Am I disturbing you?”

“No, of course not.” Shiro responds, smiling. “I’m in Williamsburg, dropped by to visit Hailey. She’s doing well.”

“That’s good,” Keith answers, but his tone is distracted and hesitant, and Shiro frowns. He feels this call isn’t just about the weather and that Keith isn’t calling him just to check on Shiro. “That’s good. You helped do that, you know? Helped her be well.”

“Keith,” Shiro lowers his voice, stepping away from the edge of the street and into an alley. He stands by a flower vendor’s stall and faces the wall. “Is everything okay?”

The other doesn’t say anything, and he can picture Keith biting his lip, like he usually does, and ducking his head to hide his eyes had Shiro been there to see them. When he does speak, his voice is a bit shaky, but there was steel lining it. “You told me that acknowledging our mistakes is always better, and if it changes everything, at least it’s a start. Be honest with me, Shiro.”

“I always am with you, Keith.” Shiro admits, and it’s more than just the petty platitudes or the anecdotes, and the jokes. Five words, and it’s more than anything Shiro has said and meant — that he’s always honest with Keith regardless of it being his own attraction, or his demons, or the belief that Keith was meant to barge into his life, be there when no one else had, and shared his own nightmares with him. “I’d never lie to you, Keith.”

“Good. That’s good. I’ve lied enough to myself.” Keith grunts, and Shiro’s fingers press tight around his phone. “Do you believe that? That it’s a start?”

“I do, now,” Shiro admits. “Talking to Hailey again was painful, but I feel better, Keith. She’s gotten so strong and I’m so proud of her. I know I sound preachy when I say this, but it helps, Keith. I can’t guess the future, Keith, but I think I’ve taken a step in the right direction.”

He hears Keith breathing, tightly, and Shiro feels himself wanting to reach out, wanting to hold his shoulder and see Keith’s eyes look at him — amazed, like he can’t believe someone would comfort him. “Keith, tell me what’s happening. You can trust me.”

“I know,” the words are rushed and high-pitched, nasal like Keith’s breathing hard, but it sounds true. “I know, Shiro. I’m just—I think it’s time I face my own mistakes.”

He tries hard to put it down, hold it back, but Shiro can’t help but smile, proud of Keith. “Do you need me to be there with you?”

“No, please. If you’re here, I might not be able to go through with it.” Keith answers, but he’s continuing before the disappointment can well up in Shiro. “You just—you just need to be there and listen. That’s all you have to do, Shiro.”

“Okay,” Shiro nods, even if the other can’t see it. “Okay, Keith.”

“I’m in Park Row. Across the NYPD.” Keith blurts, and Shiro frowns. “What are you doing there, Keith?”

“Facing my mistakes.”

Suddenly, the early happiness and joy he felt at hearing Keith’s admission — the hope bubbling in his chest at the idea of a brightly-smiling Keith finally coming to realization — it all plummets to the pit of his stomach as he hears the ominous tone. He knows that Keith has a past - a secret he holds close to his heart, one that he hasn’t shared with Shiro yet. He knows what they talked the few nights before, about Allura, hadn’t been everything. Close, maybe, but not everything.

“Keith, what are—”He starts, but Keith cuts him off. “Shiro, just listen, please. Let me tell you my story, alright?”

“I will, Keith. I’ll listen. If it’s what you want, I’ll do it.” Shiro presses, leaning against the wall with an arm, resting his forehead against it. The red bricks blur in his vision as Keith takes a deep breath on the other end, like it’s taking him everything to get air into his lungs.

“That’s all you have to do, Shiro, and it’s enough. Thank you,” and he can imagine the sad smile on Keith’s face as he says the words, and his heart breaks and he feels the earth crumble under him as the next few lines follow.

“My name is Keith Kogane. I’m twenty-four years old and I was born in Long Island City, Queens, New York. My father is Hal Kogane, former Chief of Patrol for the NYPD and my mom, Krolia, was a retired teacher. When I was seven, my father arrested Zarkon Galran, the head of the Galran family crime syndicate in New York. A year later, my parents were murdered by a Galran henchman, Sendak, but the police wrote it off as a home invasion. I tried to tell people that it wasn’t just a robbery, but nobody believed me and I was sent away to a detention center until I was sixteen and I managed to escape, angry and out for blood…”

* * *

 

_ A note left on the epitaph of Hal and Krolia Kogane: _

_ Dad, _

_ For the longest time, I thought of nothing but the last time I saw you. You were smiling, laughing, with Mom in the living room, and she was setting out my favorite cheesecake on the table. Just that morning, we visited Coney Island and you managed to convinced the Wonder Wheel guy that I’ll be safe with you even if I didn't hit the height requirement. I was terrified, but you and mom were there, and you had me on your lap and when we got to the top, I felt like I was flying and I could see everything. You were laughing and mom was taking pictures and I felt like nothing could be better than that moment. I was eight and I had no idea the world was such a shitty place. I only saw my Captain America toys and the cat outside and my classmates and Coney Island in the distance.  _

_ But things changed. Someone tried to kick the door down, and you had me hide in the cabinet and told me not to peek. I hid, but I did peek. I wanted to know what was happening even if I was scared. Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t. Maybe if I didn’t, maybe if I just closed my eyes and kept quiet and counted until 1000 like you taught me, I wouldn’t be this...person right now. But I did, and I’ll never forget the way the bullet hit you in the forehead and the way mom was pushed to the ground and shot. I’ll never forget his face, or the Galra tattoo on his shoulder. They tried to make me forget it, tried to change things, but I didn’t. I was sent away to juvie and it was hell, but I didn’t forget. I kept it to myself, and sometimes, it was the only thing that kept me sane in there. _

_ I broke out of juvie one night and I ran, begged money off the streets and tried to scare people to give them to me. I’m not proud of it, dad, but I had to — everything else didn’t matter, the only thing that did was that your murderer was out there, free, and you and mom were dead and under the ground and I felt so fucking alone. I can’t let him be happy and live while you were rotting, while I felt there was this hole in my chest like he had shot me, too. _

_ I killed him, dad. I broke into a gun store, stole a Walther P99 and tracked him down. It wasn’t even hard, he barely hid the fact that he was a former Galra member. This city is shit, and this world is shit and no one cared about what you did, trying to make this world a better place. People are content to bow their heads and let bullets fly over if it meant they didn’t get hit, doesn’t matter if others do and it didn’t matter if good people died just so they can pretend and move on with their shitty lives. I snuck into his house and waited. I didn’t even give a shit that it was Christmas and that there was a family celebrating next door. No, all I could think of was that everyone else in the world was celebrating and they were happy and they had their family and I had  _ _ no one _ _. _

_ I read your letter, dad. If somehow, wherever you are right now, if you could read this, I just wanted to say that I read your letter. You told me to be good, to not let the world and its fucking ugly heart poison mine and you told me that I could be better than anything, be better than you. I didn’t think it was possible, dad. You were the best person I know. You were my superhero. _

_ He took you and mom from me, dad. He left me with nothing. People tell me that I should forgive and forget, that I should move on and pretend that my life isn’t the fucking trainwreck it is. But I can’t, dad. He took everything from me, and all I have left is revenge. So, I killed him. I shot him in the head and in the heart, like what he did to mom. I couldn’t let him live, knowing he destroyed my life. _

_ I had thought it would have brought me satisfaction, dad. I thought that getting even — an eye for an eye and all that bullshit would make me feel better, make me feel at least justified, make me feel  _ _ anything _ _. I can’t forgive him for what he did, and I can’t forget it no matter how many times I drink, no matter how many times I slam my head against the wall hard enough to pass out. I can’t sleep at night when all I could see is you and mom, dead. I can’t look at shadows and not see his face and the way he pointed the gun, dad. I wanted it to stop. _

_ I don’t feel anything, dad. I thought I would be happy - I thought killing him would make me feel slightly better and I wouldn’t be so angry and spiteful. I don’t feel anything, dad. I can’t feel my heart. _

_ I was young and angry and stupid, and I made the wrong choices. I let my anger and hatred poison me until I was willing to stoop down and break everything you love just to get even. _

_ You were right, dad. You were right all along. I was weak, and I let it get to me. I wish I had been stronger, like you and mom. I wish I had been strong enough to move on, and to not let what happened dictate my future. The fucking psychiatrist in juvie told me the same thing and like you, I didn’t believe her. I just wanted to get even, and now I feel like I’ve lost more than what I had left. I don’t know what to do, dad. I don’t know what to do next, what to feel, and what to plan for the future. All I thought of was revenge and nothing else. I killed him, and I don’t feel anything, but I don’t know what to do anymore.  _

_ I’m not the person you wanted me to be, dad. I’m not the man you would have wanted me to be. I destroyed him before he had a chance to be real, and when I look in the mirror, all I see is everything I failed to live up to. _

_ I’m sorry, dad. I’m sorry for everything. You were right. _

_ Keith _

* * *

 

“Thank you for listening, Shiro. Thank you for giving me the courage to do this.”

And before the other could say anything — say anything more than the repetition of his name and the rasp in his voice — Keith ends the call and puts the phone on the ground. Wherever he’s going, he won’t need the phone anymore. 

It vibrates, Shiro’s name on the screen, but Keith ignores it as he stands in front of the NYPD headquarters. He looks up at its brown-red walls and the dozens of windows in even straight lines. He can still remember the times he’s seen this building up close — all the times he’s stood in front of it, and feel his mom’s hand in his as they waved at his dad going up the steps. How many times had Dad brought him here, carried in his arms and he’d point at it, making shooting noises as police officers leave the building, some of them smiling at him?

How many times had he stood here, thinking that he’d be a cop like his dad?

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, when he walks into the familiar walls and the recognizable halls and tell his story. He just stands there, for a moment, taking it in — memorizing. He hasn’t had a lot in life, not much good — not much kindness — but this view, what his father stood for—

It deserves one last look, something to keep in his heart, in whatever remains of it.

Maybe if he had played his cards right back then — if he had given himself more time to think and grieve, if he had focused on his loss than on his rage, then maybe things wouldn’t be like this, right now. If he hadn’t allowed the hatred and the venom to kill whatever it was in him that his dad saw — he might have followed in his footsteps, and he would have been a cop. He would have been good, would have protected people — be someone like Shiro, who can only do good.

But he hadn’t, and he had sacrificed the future to sate his rage and it left him with nothing but the ghosts and the questions with the answers in the amber of a bottle. He was left with scrap and the crawling and the staggering on the ground, crawling through the broken glass shards and breathing through his mouth with his face pressed against the ceiling as the floodwater pulled him even lower.

He had gotten what he wanted — revenge — but he feels like he’s lost everything and more.

Admitting it to Shiro — just once, just to be this honest, once — felt like a breath of air, long needed and desperate, and it was like seeing a spark of light in the middle of the storms and the darkness.

Entering the NYPD headquarters, admitting what he had done and letting the law judge him — it was what his father would have wanted to out of people. It’s the least Keith could do — to honor whatever remained of his memory. He doesn’t have much — he  _ isn’t _ much anymore — but he can still do this, and he can still be this good. Even if it’s infinitesimal, even if it’s insignificant and even if nobody cared for it.

Shiro would, though. Shiro would have cared. Shiro would have seen what Keith’s been trying to do all this time — trying to be better, to be good, to repay the world a little of the kindness that he had withheld because he wanted blood and damage. Shiro would have seen all his attempts at trying to fix what’s been irreparable all this time. Shiro would have seen all of it and he would have helped, would have tried to fix it, too—

And Keith would have been weak enough to let him. God, he would have wanted Shiro to—to fix him and hold him and glue back all the pieces that’s been long broken, they were unrecognizable. Shiro would have held him close and say  _ ‘I forgive you’  _ and he’d say it, every day, for as long as Keith needed to hear it.

But this was—this is something Keith needs to do. He needs to do this, to own up to his mistakes. Sendak was a murderer, and he would get no pity, not from Keith, but there was a justice system. There were laws. There were rules to obey.

Keith had taken the fate he could control — not his own, not his family’s — and decided Sendak’s, outside the law.

He made a mistake, and he had to own up to it.

It was the only thing he could offer to the eight-year old Keith who hugged his dad as they went higher and higher up on the Wonder Wheel, the Keith who looked at a person and saw someone good, the Keith that his father would have wanted him to be. The Keith he had buried together with his parents, and the Keith he had killed when he had pulled the trigger on Sendak.

It’s not much, but it’s the least he could do.

He itches for the canister of whiskey, for the burn and the numbness and the dulled aching that alcohol brings with it, but Keith stands still, acknowledges his own dependence on the amber. The canister is not in his bag or in his hands. It’s in the bottom of the apartment garbage chute together with the rest of the bottles in his apartment.

The picture and his dad’s letter burns a hole against his skin on the inside of his jacket. 

His hands are trembling, and he’s terrified, but he has to.

Suddenly, his name is in his ears — the memory of his mom and his dad saying it overlapping with another voice, stronger, more tangible, deeper and kinder — and Keith turns to find Shiro on the other end of the street.

Keith stills, unbelieving, taking in Shiro — tall and burly and beautiful — and he’s sweating, and his dark blue shirt is stained in sweat, but Keith doesn’t care about that. Shiro’s looking at him — and there’s worry and fear and desperation on his face — and Keith can’t move, can’t feel his knees and he’s glued to the spot as Shiro breathes,  _ pants,  _  and makes his way to him.

He doesn’t look away, not at the passers by bumping into him and looking at his sweat-stricken skin. Keith can’t look away, locked in place by Shiro’s fierce gaze.

He doesn’t know what the other’s going to do — not after what he had confessed, what he had admitted — and it scares him. The thought of Shiro turning away, angry and bitter and disgusted, has his hands shaking so hard he presses them against his belly in a pathetic effort to still them.

“Shiro—” He says, his voice unsteady and his vision blurring as Shiro gets closer, taupe eyes steely. “I have to do this. I’m sorry, but please let me do this.”

Shiro stalks forward, muscles tight and his shoulders tense and Keith doesn’t—

He doesn’t know if Shiro’s going to shake his shoulders or punch him or haul him up to the NYPD like a mangy animal—

But what he doesn’t expect—

—Is for Shiro wrap his arms around Keith and hug him close,  _ tight.  _ Crushed against his body.

Keith doesn’t know what to do, his hands coming up around Shiro’s back as the emotions are too much — too strong for him to cover with a lid, for the years-old lock and key he’s locked them in — and his vision loses focus and warmth runs down his cheeks as he presses his mouth against Shiro’s shoulder. The other isn’t loosening his hold as Keith trembles, his fingers clawing down his back and unable to stop the sounds out of his lips.

“I’m here, Keith. I’m here.” Shiro whispers against the lobe of his ear, and the words sound trite — overused and artificial — but the emotion, the desperation and the tightness of Shiro’s hold around him, it has Keith nodding as he presses in close, finding stability and ground in the body too-warm against him.

He didn’t want to be alone, he didn’t want to hurt, he didn’t want to be by himself when he did this.

And Shiro was here — like a fucking hero out of a fairytale, swooping in when Keith needed him most — and he smelled like cedar and  _ V’s _ and he’s crazy, Keith’s gone crazy, but he smells like Dad, but deeper and warmer, more tangible. Realer than his memories of his parents had been in the last few years they’ve haunted him. 

“I can’t let you do this by yourself.” Shiro says, voice hinging on the edge of a cliff as Keith buries his face against his shoulder. “I can’t stop you from doing this, but I can’t let you do this by yourself.”

“You don’t have to be alone in this, Keith.” Shiro says, pulling back, a hand on his cheek. His own taupe eyes are liquid, and pain is distinct across his features, along with the desperation and the fear. Keith can’t see him clearly, his vision had lost focus and everything was grey-taupe miasma. “Let me be with you in this. You don’t have to be alone. Not anymore.”

Keith blinks, tries to follow his outline with his gaze, and the words shouldn’t make him feel so, oh, so relieved, like he’s stepped past the line and someone pulled him back before he fell. “It’s not—”he swallows, his voice cracking. “It’s not pretty.”

“I don’t care, Keith,” Shiro presses, voice firm. “I want to be with you in this, and I don’t care what happens next and I don’t know what  _ will _ happen next, but I’ll be with you, okay? You don’t have to go through this alone.”

The words are amazing, and hopeful, and they feel like the rays of the sun after an eternity of darkness and ice. They take his heart and inject life and make it beat again, and the newness, the hope in spite of the bleakness, beats in his chest, and it hurts. It hurts, but it hurts  _ good _ and it doesn’t make him feel like he’s drowning — the way he’s been drowning all his life, holding on to the edge of the sky with nothing but his own fears and his own desperation. The twinging, and the strings snapping and rebuilding — the vessels and the synapses and the veins alighting, aligning and rebuilding in his chest — it hurts, and it stings like lightning and fire and ice but it keeps the blood flowing, and the air pumping into his lungs and it keeps him steady, keeps him breathing and Keith realizes he’s been half-submerged, in reverse, in water and despair all this time.

“Don’t you hate me?” He asks — he has to know, has to be sure that Shiro isn’t here out of pity and hatred. “Don’t you hate me for what I’ve done?”

Shiro looks at him — and his eyes are bright and burning with hope and faith — and the hand on his face  _ burns _ but it’s a pyre he’s long submitted himself to, and it’s the ignition of a inferno he never knew he had been craving for so long. “How can I when you try so goddamn hard to be good every fucking day?”

There are no words in Keith’s mouth — nothing left of his vocabulary, the higher-plane functions of his brain are fucked and shit and all he could do is just continue to stare at Shiro as the floodwaters recede. “I see you trying, Keith, and I can’t be any prouder of you than I already am. You’re strong, stronger than most and it’s because you’re willing to stand up to your own beliefs and own up to your mistakes — even if it means getting locked away for it — that makes me see how strong you’ve been all this time and if the world doesn’t see it, then fuck them. I see it, Keith. I see you.”

And maybe it’s the faith — just the blind, or maybe it’s not blind but set and determined — that has Keith raising a hand to wipe at his eyes until they’re clear, or clear enough to see Shiro’s supportive smile, and he feels the hand on his cheek wipe away whatever stray tracks there are.

Can he believe?

Can he believe Shiro?

Can he believe that he doesn’t have to be alone — after what he’s done and what he’s caused and what he’s destroyed?

Somehow, when the word  _ yes _ flashes in his mind, it’s not terrifying. Or it is, but it’s not suffocating and it doesn’t feel like he’s stepping into a pit of his own making and drowning in amber and glass and scarlet. When he nods his head and allows Shiro to lean close and kiss him—

When he feels nothing but the press of the lips against his own, and what runs through him is just warmth and the suffuse of hope and the belief that he’s drifted ashore, the waters are still and the land under his arms are real and he’s not lost — not anymore —

When he leans close and lets the kiss pull him towards a promise — hope — and whatever remains of his future, and the loss he’s long expected to find isn’t there, and what he sees is a brightness he thought he had long sacrificed—

And there are no words, or maybe there are and he’s not sane and coherent enough to find them, to sift through his mind and put a name to them, for the gentle fire in his chest and the loss of the coldness in his hands or the fact, the mere fact that he doesn’t feel like he’s struggling for land anymore.

“I’m not letting go, okay?” Shiro promises, leaning back, and his hand is held in a firm, warm one.

Keith swallows — and nods his head — and when they walk into the New York Police Department, he believes it.

Shiro’s doesn’t let him go and time—

Time finally doesn’t run out.

* * *

 

**FIN**

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for taking the time to read through this mess. Like I said above, this fic was challenging to write -- not just the characterization but also the dialogue and how heavily reliant a story could be on dialogue and, yeah, I swear this fic fought with me every step of the way and it didn't flow as well as my other fics do. Still, I am proud of it -- prouder even, considering the challenge. Do let me know what you think - be they critical or not - as I would love to talk about this fic and my approach to the themes here.
> 
> Also, I've never been to NY before, and I've obviously never worked in a juvenile center so all the locations, legal terminologies, news articles and official-sounding terms are presented merely for drama (I am especially guilty regarding the psych evaluation as I am a psych major and I feel like I should have taken the time to make Honerva's claim more plausible lol) and for pushing the character development. Do take with a large amount of salt.
> 
> Also, made my art bc i'm a loser like that:  
> 
> 
> Come scream at me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/spaceboykenny) and on [Tumblr](https://spaceboykenny.tumblr.com/)


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